Error Codes

“Beauty may be skin deep, but weird? Weird goes all the way to the motherboard.”

— Daniel Mercer, just before everything went to hell.

The first time I saw her, she literally stopped traffic.

I was outside on my coffee break, nursing a cup of something too bitter and too expensive despite being half cream and sugar, staring at my phone like it owed me money. A normal day. It was the kind of day, where the highlight was an uneventful morning shift at tech support, and the lowlight was realizing I had exactly three dollars left until payday.

Thank you, overpriced coffee addiction. And thank God for credit cards.

Then she stepped off the curb. There was no slow-motion hair flip, no dramatic gust of wind. She just stepped off the curb, and the entire street ground to a halt.

A businessman mid-stride locked up like a buffering video on hotel Wi-Fi. A cyclist wobbled, his feet glued to the pedals, face slack with awe. Some guy with two iced coffees lost both to gravity, dooming his chinos to the sticky embrace of a mocha waterfall. And the cars? Completely frozen. Like they didn’t dare keep moving in her presence.

I still hadn’t looked up, too busy scrolling through customer service emails and anime groups on reddit. Even so, I felt the weirdness settle over the street—like the air had thickened. That weird, too-heavy feeling in the air settled over me.

It was the kind of sensation I’d felt before in the background of my life but always brushed off for any number of reasons… Déjà vu. Low blood sugar. Probably nothing. I glanced up, and that’s when I saw her.

She was… impossibly beautiful. I don’t mean the ‘magazine cover, Instagram influencer’ kind of beautiful. I mean the kind of weaponized attractiveness that short-circuits the human brain. The kind that makes people forget how to move, how to blink, how to breathe. I think I choked on my coffee, but I don’t really remember.

She walked toward me with an easy confidence, stepping around frozen pedestrians like this was completely normal for her. A dark green dress, knee-length, stylish without trying too hard. An expensive bag slung effortlessly over one shoulder. Glasses perched on her nose—thick glasses, like the kind your high school librarian would wear, but way thicker.

That was when I knew something was wrong. Before I could work out the logistics of how someone who looked like that needed prescription lenses strong enough to identify distant planets, she stopped in front of me.

“Are you Daniel?” Her voice was smooth, confident. This was someone who never had to repeat themselves, because people always listened the first time.

A chill trickled down my spine. I stared. Not because I was stunned into silence like everyone else—though, let’s be real, I absolutely was—but because I had no idea how this woman knew my name.

“Uh.” My brain was still booting up, BIOS flashing behind my eyes. “That’s what my nametag says?” It surely did, in smaller print beneath ‘Elysium Solutions.’

“Dan? Can I call you ‘Dan’?” She didn’t wait for my answer as my mouth worked but made no intelligible noises. She didn’t wait for a reply. Instead, she pulled a sleek, high-end smartphone from her bag and held it out like it had personally wronged her. “It’s broken, Dan.”

I blinked at it. That’s why she was here? Not because of some cosmic mistake? Not because I was hallucinating from too much caffeine and not enough sleep?

“You… need tech support?” I asked, because my brain refused to process the idea of her needing me for anything.

She exhaled. Not a huff—more like the long-suffering sigh of someone who was used to the universe wasting her time. “Yes. You’re the only person in your department with a five-star customer rating. I asked for you specifically.”

Now, I don’t know what’s more surprising—that she needed help, that she knew my name, or that my boss actually let someone request me (He wasn’t my biggest fan despite the five-star rating). But I did know one thing: I had no idea how to fix a phone while in the direct gravitational pull of the most attractive woman I’d ever seen.

I took the device carefully, fingers brushing hers for half a second before I jerked my hand away like a middle schooler terrified of cooties. She didn’t seem to notice. I looked down at the phone, desperate for something—anything—to anchor me to reality.

It wasn’t turning on. Basic issue. Could be the battery, the software, the universe trying to smite me for my sins. Nothing like a little ineptitude to make women realize your shortcomings were more obvious than meets the eye.

“Okay,” I said, professional mode kicking in, desperately trying to suppress my growing panic and the trickle of sweat that threatened to start at my armpits. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”

Then I glanced back up at her—directly into her eyes. My entire body locked up like a crashed operating system. A ringing noise filled my head, like a dial-up modem trying to connect. My knees nearly buckled, my heart thumped sideways in my chest, and for one terrifying second, I was completely frozen.

The moment passed. I sucked in a breath, blinking rapidly, muscles sluggish as I forced myself to move again.

Her head tilted slightly. Behind those ridiculously thick glasses, her eyes were an impossible shade of gold. Hadn’t they been blue before?

“…Interesting,” she murmured.

The businessman who had frozen mid-stride suddenly faceplanted onto the sidewalk, tripping over a step he hadn’t been paying attention to. The cyclist, trying to resume his ride, crashed into a garbage can instead. A barista from the coffee shop next door fell into a table, sending espresso splattering across the concrete.

And yet, I was the only one still standing.

Her lips quirked slightly, almost like a smirk. Not smug. Not cruel. Just… amused. “You really are different.”

Different? Different how?

Before I could ask, before I could even think, she plucked her phone out of my hands and turned sharply on her heel.

“Wait,” I blurted. “Where—what—who are you?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “Euryale.”

Mononymous, like Shakira, Drake, Beyoncé, or Voldemort. Who the hell has just one name?

But then she was gone, stepping into the street again, moving around frozen, dazed pedestrians like this was just another Tuesday.

I stood there like a broken Roomba, coffee cooling in my hand, as the city came unstuck around me.

The name brought back memories of a childhood spent in books, fairy tales, legends, and mythology… and an adulthood perusing fantasy forums. Euryale, like the sister of Medusa, as in a Gorgon.

I stared at my empty hands where her phone had been, my thoughts still sluggish and my fingers tingling where they had brushed against hers.

I was going to have a very, very weird day.

Again. Story of my life.