The truck slammed into an invisible wall at the Czech border. The screen went static-white, and a final system notification popped up on his desktop:
The engine of his starting Renault Magnum roared to life, but something was off. The interior lights flickered in a rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat. He took a high-stakes delivery from Berlin to Prague, but as he hit the Autobahn, the GPS didn't show the road ahead. Instead, it displayed a single line of text: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
With a final ding , the download finished. Alex bypassed three antivirus warnings—"false positives," he told himself—and launched the game.
Suddenly, his speakers crackled. It wasn't the sound of the CB radio. It was a heavy, rhythmic breathing that matched the flickering of his real-world desk lamp.
He floored it, his virtual speedometer climbing to 140 km/h, far beyond the speed limiter. The rain began to lash against the windshield, but the wipers moved in slow motion, smeared with a dark, oily residue. He tried to quit the game, but the "Esc" key felt dead under his finger.
Alex froze as he heard the unmistakable hiss of air brakes releasing right behind his chair.
Alex glanced at the side mirror. In the reflection, the highway behind him was pitch black—not night-time black, but a void where the road should have been. Every time he shifted gears, the void crept closer.
