A Debt of Time and Tears

The flickering cursor on my screen was the only constant; my life, a developer' s dream turned broke reality, spiraled with every line of code that built debt instead of worlds. My wife, Chloe, a sharp, cold woman, shared my last name but not my life, her presence in our sterile home a constant reminder of everything we' d lost.

Then, a black box popped up on my monitor, a simple command prompt with a blinking green line: "Cosmic Stream Initialized. Observing Universe C-782."