Zero to One (G/t)

[5] Mouse Trap, pt. 3

"I can see you just fine."

"Oh... Oh, my god," Lauren breathed in her own panic and filth, slid down her wall with her back to it, toppled in a puddle of regurgitated food, sweat, fear, and tears.

If she was indeed in one of his spaces as it had appeared, then it was sensible that he could see her whenever he desired. Knowing how or, worse, why, however, was another story that she wasn't sure that she wanted to read. As exciting as the technology seemed, was she as safe as this overbearing onlooker tried to claim?

With every new action and word, Lauren's confidence waned.

The enhanced zoom on the screen was then stretched further out, revealing the entire plaza that held Lauren and later, eventually, the whole block in which it was contained. Everything not within a certain radius from the center was smudged into a blur, almost as if he rubbed it all out for himself, giving all that was untouched a tilt-shift feel. Her form, now more antlike than ever, was illuminated in a bolder, verdant glow to differentiate her from everything else, which proved immediately useful.

Mesa Metro was, in her eyes, the miniature megapolis she had only envisioned it was to him up and over yonder.

The snapshot then became a living map of sorts, changing to a silent video with a snail trail in Lauren's same green hue following her as she exited the area, taking some insectile public transit as far as she could go before walking the rest of the way. The rest of the days between then and now was spent with her glow spiraling in the same place as where she currently was: home, never leaving, never having expected a response.

With as much surveillance as she had for her things and how dystopian Mesa Metro could be at times, she never felt more out in the open than she did now. Luckily for her, there seemed to be no footage of her inside the house. Still, how much had he already learned of her domicile with her glasses and watch just sitting there?

Did his omnipresence include space within walls, too, or various altitudes of places, or other angles than the locked bird's-eye – more like a midday sun's eye – view? What were the chances he already figured out her house's floor plan and her place in it?

"I haven't gotten to probe your existence from end to end to know for sure, yet," a new message started, somehow still legible from her further distance away, "but much is already clear."

"Y-Yet?" Lauren echoed, audibly coughing from her own confusion. Whether he meant that he hadn't finished or hadn't started, she could only wonder... and hope he'd reconsider both options.

But she didn't have to, for long.

"One could say I'm already halfway deep in prodding, managing this conversation and all," the transcriptions continued. "So, why stop now?"

Lauren's heart sank, her wishes vanishing like his words every few seconds. 'Halfway?' In only some minutes!? She was officially stuck in quicksand with not enough calmness to get herself out. The remaining semblances of peace she could imagine were all in the after, nothing in the now. With that crater from a pen's cap still fresh in memory, multiple visions of ends of days once again flashed in her head, ranging from elongated and cataclysmic to subtle and swift, all of his doing, surely, and it was all her fault.

"Well... with you not having manipulated your new 'update' for some time, now, perhaps you've seen enough of it." Truer words had never been spoken. Lauren had seen enough of a lot. "Though with that research I appear to have interrupted, I would've guessed otherwise, believing you'd want as much as you could get." That statement did nothing to relieve Lauren, either, proving he could go and had gone further into her data – her existence, even – on top of reading her psyche unfortunately well.