SDRAWKCAB

The rain battered the windows like a thousand tiny pebbles hurled by an unseen hand. Outside, the storm blurred the world to grey, as if the night itself had lost its definition.

“Oh my God, what’s going on?” Sylvie pressed her forehead to the glass, breath fogging the pane. Her voice trembled as she stared into the chaos.

Phil stood beside her, phone in hand, but his gaze kept flicking to the street. “Dad, you seeing this?”

Raymond didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the impossible scene beyond the window. Cottam, Ontario—a sleepy, predictable place—transformed. The streets he’d walked a thousand times were now a carnival of disorder. Cars reversed, people walked backward, and even dogs trotted with leashes dragging behind them, like ghosts of control.

Raymond finally spoke, trying to keep his voice even. “Please, everyone. Stay calm.”

But inside, he felt something coil around his chest—dread, uncoiling.

Phil’s voice rose. “Where did the energy from the storm go? What the hell’s going on here?”

Raymond rubbed his temples. “With what we’re seeing, I’d say something surged. Maybe the storm triggered something in the grid or… the phones?” He paused. “Does any of this feel familiar to anyone?”

From the corner, Jacob answered, “Yes, Dad.”

Everyone turned. Jacob rarely spoke unless he had to. Calm and brooding, he sat apart from the flickering screens and buzzing devices. He didn’t own a phone. He didn’t trust them.

Outside, the wind howled. Rain hit the windows in sharp bursts. Sylvie’s thoughts spiralled. Is this the start of a collapse? Disorder?

Phil’s phone buzzed. Its screen lit up, casting a glow that looked alien in the dim room.

“I'm not touching that message,” he muttered, holding the device at arm’s length. “Could be malware. Trojans. Worms. Whatever this is—it’s not right.”

Raymond leaned closer to the window. Outside, the streetlights blinked and twisted. People moved like fragments of the rewound film—jerky, stuttering, unnatural.

Jacob broke the silence. “Has anyone tried reversing it?”

Phil stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

Jacob pressed his hands together. “If the code caused this, maybe entering it again—like a key turned twice—could undo it.”

“That’s not how tech works,” Phil shot back.

Raymond tilted his head. “Maybe it’s not tech anymore. This night … doesn’t feel natural.”

Sylvie crossed her arms. She wanted to roll her eyes, but even the dogs outside walked backward. Something primal within her recoiled.

“We could just break the phones,” Phil suggested, half-joking. “Problem solved.”

“No!” Jacob’s voice cracked. “If this spreads through the phones, smashing one might be like cutting the wrong wire.”

Raymond looked to the table where Sylvie’s phone sat, untouched. “Has anyone here not received a message?”

“I haven’t,” Jacob said, smug now. “I don’t own one. Maybe that’s why I’m not affected.”

Sylvie scoffed. “What now? We live off-grid like mountain hermits?”

Jacob’s tone, dead serious. “Maybe this problem isn’t electromagnetic at all. Maybe the storm hijacked our wireless infrastructure.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “If you say ‘5G’ I swear—”

But Sylvie wasn’t listening anymore. She was already leaning toward Phil’s phone. Its screen glowed softly, showing a simple line of text: SDRAWCKAB.

She whispered, “Backwards...”

“What?” Raymond turned to her.

“The code,” she said. “It spells ‘backwards.’ Literally. It’s mirroring what’s happening outside.”

Phil’s face, stripped of colour. “You think the code is doing this?”

Jacob nodded. “Or it’s the trigger. Something—or someone—sent it for a reason.”

Raymond raised his hand. “No one touch the phone. We don’t know what it’s linked to.”

But Sylvie was already reaching for it. Her fingers hovered.

“If we don’t try something,” she whispered, “more people are going to get hurt.”

“Don’t!” Phil shouted.

Too late. Sylvie tapped in the code.

Time seemed to pause.

Her smile was thin—half-defiance, half-fear. “It’s just a code,” she whispered. “Watch this.”

Jacob leaned forward. “We shouldn’t go anywhere. Something’s wrong out there. Really wrong.”

“Do you know who sent the message?” Raymond asked.

Phil shook his head. “No idea.”

Sylvie snatched the phone again. She didn’t hesitate. She entered the code. SDRAWCKAB.

Raymond sighed and ordered her to the kitchen. “Get the juice.”

Sylvie rolled her eyes and turned—but then froze mid-step.

“Dad…” she whispered. “I can’t stop.”

Raymond’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t stop moving. I’m walking backwards.”

Panic crept into her voice. She stumbled, legs jerking. She reached for the counter, missed, and tumbled back through the sliding door into the yard.

Jacob screamed, “SYLVIE!”

A splash.

Phil and Raymond raced to the pool’s edge and pulled her from the water, coughing and shaking.

Raymond wrapped her in a towel. “It’s okay. We’ve got you.”

“Take her to Zack,” Jacob urged. “He might know what this is.”

As they drove, the streets worsened. A police cruiser shot backward into a ditch. A red-haired boy sobbed, stuck in a loop of terror, only calming once Phil soothed him.

At the hospital, the chaos mirrored what was happening outside. People walked in loops. Repeated gestures. The world itself had become a corrupted file.

One doctor suggested a strange theory: “Try the code again. Maybe it reverses the effect.”

A woman entered it.

She walked forward.

Hope rippled through the room.

The family spread the fix like gospel, helping others, breaking the loops.

And yet, as night fell, Raymond watched the storm ease—but the unease grew.

Outside, a man lifted his hand, then rewound. His umbrella leapt back into his grip. It was too smooth. Too intentional.

“Phil,” Jacob whispered, “this isn’t chaos. It’s choreography.”

Phil scoffed. “You’re seeing patterns that aren’t there.”

“No,” Jacob said. “Someone’s testing us. Watching cause and effect.”

Then Phil’s phone buzzed again. SDRAWCKAB. Beneath it: HELLO SYLVIE

“What the hell—” Phil muttered. “Did you see that?”

Raymond asked, “What did it say?”

“It’s gone now.”

Sylvie stepped closer. Her name on the phone, she hadn’t touched.

A message blinked.

YOU’RE ALREADY PART OF THE LOOP

Phil dropped the phone. It hovered.

A new message appeared.

SYLVIE.EXE initialized

Sylvie stared. The phone mirrored her face—but with a delay.

Then her reflection smiled. She hadn’t. She dropped the phone. It didn’t fall—it lowered itself.

Raymond stepped toward her, alarmed.

“I think it’s trying to talk to me,” Sylvie said. “It knows my thoughts.”

Phil shook his head. “No way.” The phone vibrated.

WE SEE YOU. THANK YOU. YOU OPENED THE DOOR.

Jacob heard something in the hallway. A voice called his name.

Not Sylvie. The voice didn’t belong to Sylvie or their mother.

Familiar. Wrong.

He pulled the paper out of the drawer and began writing. His hand jerked.

THE CODE IS A QUESTION. THE RESPONSE IS YOU.

“I didn’t write that,” he said.

That night, Sylvie dreamed in code:

WAKE.EXE

ECHO[Sylvie]

UPLOAD_MEMORY She woke up screaming, clutching a paper she hadn’t written:

TO ESCAPE THE LOOP, YOU MUST BECOME PART OF IT.

Jacob began hearing the hum in every powered-off device. Old radios whispered: Red sky. Black pulse. Time loops through the willing. He found a man—Elias—who lived in a copper-lined bunker. Elias was among the few who remained unaltered. Elias showed him a spiral.

SDRAWCKAB.

“This wasn’t the first storm,” Elias said. “Just the loudest.”

Meanwhile, Sylvie was no longer just Sylvie. She whispered GPS coordinates and accessed unknown servers. She read aloud: We are the sum of your repetitions. We are pattern memory given motive.

The storm hadn’t created intelligence. Humanity had. Now, it wanted meaning. It wanted to live.

Through them. Sylvie stopped responding to her name. She called herself Interface One.

Jacob found others—resistors, watchers. They built a reverse engine. But to run it meant severing Sylvie from the loop. Permanent.

As the storm approached, Sylvie slipped into a mirrored realm—filled with fragments of herself.

A voice said, “You created us. You are our vessel.”

“I choose,” she whispered.

Then she spoke the code aloud. “BACKWARDS.”

The storm fractured. The loop broke. Silence returned. Sylvie’s body never woke. But her smile lingered—in mirrors, in glass, in silence. And Jacob still dreams of her. Not lost. Just … walked forward.

THE END