The apartment is dimly lit, save for the neon glow of various monitors and the rhythmic pulsing of his workstation’s screensaver—a looping, abstract animation of a sword slicing cleanly through an infinite void. The soft hum of a fan fills the air, mingling with the faint sound of lo-fi beats playing in the background, something he put on an hour ago and promptly stopped noticing.

Dirk Strider sits at his desk, leaning back in his chair, idly twirling a screwdriver between his fingers. A half-disassembled drone lies in front of him, its tiny mechanical guts exposed. He hasn’t worked on it in at least twenty minutes—his mind wandered somewhere between tweaking its servo functions and staring into space, lost in an internal dialogue he’s not sure he even wants to participate in.

Beside him, an untouched can of an energy drink—some dubious Earth C equivalent of Red Bull—rests on a pile of books, precariously close to toppling. He eyes it for a moment before deciding against it. He’s already wired enough, and the last thing he needs is another night of staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, overanalyzing everything he’s ever said to anyone.