I didn't tell anyone about the log.
At least, not at first.
That afternoon passed without incident. The system behaved normally, the servers responded as expected, and no more strange entries appeared. If I wanted to convince myself that the morning had been a coincidence—or a bad joke—that silence helped.
Too much.
When something truly breaks, it rarely fixes itself that cleanly.
I copied the log file before leaving work. Not the original—just a snapshot, saved locally. If the entry vanished again, I wanted proof that it had existed.
At 6:18 p.m., I boarded the bus home.
I checked my phone.
Battery: 42%.
I remembered the number because it annoyed me. I hated even numbers that weren't divisible by ten. A pointless habit, but a consistent one.
Three stops later, my phone vibrated.
A notification.
Battery: 41%.
That was normal.
Then it vibrated again.
Battery: 42%.
I frowned.
Battery percentages didn't go up on their own. Not without charging, not without a reboot. I unlocked the screen and watched it closely.
42%.
No fluctuation. No charging icon.
I turned off the screen.
Ten seconds later, another vibration.
Battery: 41%.
Then silence.
I didn't feel fear. Not yet. Just irritation, mixed with a growing sense of familiarity. The same feeling I'd had that morning in the kitchen. The same subtle hesitation in the numbers.
At home, I didn't turn on the lights immediately. I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, and connected the phone via cable. If the battery data was corrupted, the system logs would show it.
They didn't.
The usage graph was clean. No spikes. No anomalies. According to the phone, nothing unusual had happened at all.
That was when I realized the problem.
The data wasn't broken.
It was selective.
I opened the copied system log from work.
The two lines were still there.
[08:59:59] — Record adjusted.
[09:00:01] — Observer acknowledged.
No timestamps had changed. No metadata had been altered. The file behaved like a finished record—closed, archived, untouched.
Except I knew it hadn't been.
I created a new document and started typing.
Not a report.
Not an analysis.
A list.
Time discrepancies
Temporary reversals
Entries appearing only when observed
I stopped.
Observed.
The word lingered longer than it should have.
I leaned back and stared at the ceiling, replaying the events of the day in order. The clocks. The log. The message. The battery.
They weren't random.
They followed a sequence.
First, a discrepancy.
Then, confirmation.
Then, acknowledgment.
As if something had tested whether I would notice.
I checked the time.
10:59 p.m.
I waited.
At exactly 11:00, my laptop screen flickered.
Not a blackout. Not a crash.
Just a brief distortion, like a skipped frame.
A new file appeared on my desktop.
No download animation.
No creation timestamp.
Just a name.
record_0001.txt
I didn't open it immediately.
My hand hovered over the mouse, a strange calm settling in my chest. Whatever this was, it had already crossed a line. Ignoring it wouldn't restore things to how they were.
I clicked.
The file contained a single sentence.
"Pattern confirmed. Continue."
I closed the laptop.
Outside, the city lights burned steadily, unaware—or indifferent—to whatever had just taken note of me.
I sat there in the dark, the message replaying in my mind.
This wasn't an accident.
And it wasn't over.
It had only just begun to repeat.