Day Dreams «SECURE • 2024»

Elias smiled to himself, a small, private expression that often made strangers on the train glance away. He wasn't just killing time; he was stimulating his creativity . Recently, he’d started writing these visions down in a notes app, turning his "idle" thoughts into a sprawling fantasy epic.

In his mind, he wasn't a junior data analyst with a damp umbrella and a lukewarm latte. He was Captain Elias Thorne, standing on the deck of the Solaris , a ship that sailed not on water, but on the shimmering rings of Saturn. The air there didn't smell of wet wool and diesel; it smelled of ozone and stardust. Day Dreams

He closed his eyes again. The Solaris was approaching the Great Blue Vortex. His crew—characters he’d built with intricate lore over years of commutes—waited for his command. There was Lyra, the navigator with bioluminescent tattoos, and Kael, the engineer who could fix a warp drive with a paperclip. They were more real to him than his coworkers. Elias smiled to himself, a small, private expression

The rhythmic clack-clack of the train was a metronome for Elias’s thoughts. Outside, the gray suburbs of London blurred into a watercolor wash, but Elias wasn't seeing the rain-streaked glass. He was somewhere else entirely. In his mind, he wasn't a junior data