He hit download. The progress bar crawled. Outside, a heavy rain began to lash against his window, blurring the city lights into smears of neon. When the transfer finished, he moved the file to a thumb drive and slotted it into the back of his aging black box.
The scratching at the door stopped. Then, the handle began to turn.
Elias had found the link on a dead-end server. The file name was a string of gibberish: WAGMA_STB_V04_FINAL.txt .
In the silence of the room, Elias heard a soft, rhythmic scratching against the wood of his actual door. He looked back at the TV. The figure on the screen was holding a small, handheld device—a Set-Top Box exactly like his own.
Should the "Wagma" entity be a or a rogue AI ?
