Chapter Text
The California sun hit the Stanford campus with that specific, golden-hued arrogance reserved for places where the future is manufactured. Sam stood near the entrance of the Main Quad, his duffel bag slung over a shoulder, breathing in the scent of manicured lawns and impending intellectual anxiety.
It was September 2001. Again.
He had been here before. He had been everywhere before. He had stared into the abyss, watched the sky burn, and stood in the center of cosmic collapse more times than he cared to count. But as a squirrel darted across his path, pausing to chitter at him with twitchy, judgmental eyes, Sam felt a strange, giddy sensation in his chest.
No apocalypse, he told himself, the thought echoing with the sweetness of a forbidden dessert. No ancient prophecies, no splintering realities, no desperate final stands.
Just four years of pristine, Ivy-adjacent academic excellence and, if he played his cards right, the most spectacular, campus-wide sequence of pranks in university history.
He adjusted his backpack and started walking toward his assigned dorm. His phone buzzed in his pocket—a notification for a freshman orientation meeting he was already ten minutes late for. He checked the time, smiled, and pulled out his phone.
"Sorry, sorry," he muttered to a passing student who looked like he hadn't slept since the late nineties. "Is the lecture hall in building four still a deathtrap for anyone wearing blue?"
The student blinked, confused, and shook his head before hurrying away.
Sam didn’t need the meeting. He knew the layout of the campus better than the architects. He knew exactly where the maintenance tunnels were, which doors had faulty latches, and precisely which professor’s office had the creaky floorboard that could be rigged to emit a high-pitched, inexplicable jazz saxophone sound whenever someone entered.
As he rounded the corner, he spotted a group of over-eager freshmen huddled under a banner, their faces masks of ambition and terror. They were the perfect audience.
He leaned against a stone pillar, pulling a small, nondescript remote from his pocket. He had spent the last three nights—in a version of time he had successfully discarded—crafting a harmless, high-frequency transmitter. He tapped a button, and exactly three seconds later, every single smart-watch and phone in the vicinity emitted the synchronized, cheerful sound of a chirping cricket.
The group of freshmen froze. They looked at their wrists. They looked at the sky. They looked at each other.
Sam tucked the remote away, stifling a laugh that felt more genuine than any sound he’d made in decades. The world was spinning, the clock was ticking, and for the first time, he didn't care about what came next. He just wanted to see how many people he could confuse before lunch.
He started toward the dorms, whistling a tune he’d learned from a street performer in a city that hadn't been built yet. The first year of Stanford was going to be an absolute masterpiece.