I freeze, the words hanging in the air like a thick fog. I know her? No… that's impossible.
I lean back, trying to process it. My mind races, but no answers come. Nothing fits.
She tilts her head, and I can almost hear the soft sound of her voice, whispering through the screen.
Do you remember, Steven? Do you remember what you were?
I blink, the words not making sense. What does she mean, "what you were"?
The screen shifts again, and suddenly, the office around me is gone. I'm no longer sitting at my desk, but standing in an old, familiar place. A place I haven't seen in years.
The dim, flickering lights of a high school hallway. The scent of old textbooks and chalk dust fills the air. I'm a teenager again, and I can feel the weight of uncertainty pressing against my chest.
"Steven."
I turn around, and there she is—the woman—but now she's not just a face on a screen. She's here, standing before me, her smile softer, but no less intense.
"Do you remember?" she asks again.
The world tilts, the ground beneath my feet unsteady, and suddenly, everything clicks. The memories flood back—the late nights spent writing in my room, the frustration, the desperation to be something more, something different.
The woman, her name was Olivia, my childhood friend. But that was years ago. We lost touch after she moved away, after she… disappeared. I always thought it was just some kind of weird coincidence.
But now, as I stare at her, I realize it wasn't a coincidence at all. She's the one who started it—the one who gave me the first hint of what I could become.
The one who introduced me to the idea of magic in storytelling.
"You," I whisper, the words barely escaping my lips. "You're the one who gave me the laptop."
She nods, her smile still present, though it's tinged with something darker. "Not just the laptop, Steven. I gave you the power to create—to shape the world with your words. You asked for it. You needed it."
"No…" I shake my head, struggling to process it all. "But... I didn't know what I was asking for. I didn't know the price."
"Of course you didn't," she says, her voice soft but edged with something sharp. "That's how it always works, doesn't it? You ask for something, and then you get it. But you don't know what it costs until it's too late."
Her words sting, and I feel the weight of them settle over me. Everything—the success, the recognition, the stories—it was all too easy. Too effortless. But now I see it for what it was. I see the truth.
"You want me to write, Steven. To write like I never have before," she says, stepping closer. "And you want to know why? Because the stories you tell—the ones you write with the laptop's magic—they shape the world. They change things."
I swallow hard, feeling the enormity of her words. "Change things?"
Her smile widens, darkening. "Yes. And now, you must decide: Do you keep writing, knowing what you've become? Or do you stop, and face the consequences of your actions?"
The screen flickers again, and I'm back at my desk, heart racing. The room is silent, but the weight of her presence lingers.
I close my eyes, my mind racing. The truth is here. It's inescapable.
But as I sit there, trying to make sense of it all, a single question echoes in my mind:
What happens if I stop?
I open my eyes, and the laptop—her laptop—glows brightly before me.
I press the power button, the soft hum of the laptop filling the space. The screen comes alive with a flash of light, and the very next thing I see makes my blood run cold.
A single line of text blinks on the screen.
"You were always meant to write, Steven."
The moment the laptop's screen flickered out, a strange, almost empty silence fell over me. It wasn't the relief I expected—it wasn't anything at all. My fingers hovered above the keyboard, waiting for the words that would never come from it again.
I had made a choice.
The decision had been years in the making, but in that instant, it became crystal clear. The magic was gone, and with it, so was the easy creativity I had come to rely on. No more effortless brilliance.
No more writing in a daze, my fingers moving faster than my mind. What was left? What did I even have without the crutch?
I closed the laptop with a quiet click. I could almost hear its disappointment, but I didn't care.
I needed to write. I needed to feel the pressure of the page beneath my fingers again. Real pressure, not the false kind that came with an enchanted machine.
And for the first time in years, I reached for something else—a notepad, a simple pen. It felt awkward, unfamiliar, but it was the only way forward.
The first sentence took an eternity to come. I scratched the words out slowly, as if I had forgotten how to write in the absence of magic.
The second sentence came, a little faster, and the third—quicker still. It was messy. It was raw.
It was real.
And for the first time in ages, I felt something I hadn't in a long time: satisfaction.
It was a struggle.
At first, I cursed my own slowness. Where had my fluidity gone? The brilliance I once took for granted felt out of reach.
But I didn't stop. I pressed on. Each word felt like a small victory, a reclaiming of something lost, something I'd forgotten I was capable of.
Weeks passed. It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't fast.
There were days when I doubted my decision, when the blank page mocked me, when I felt my confidence slip away, just as it had before.
But every time I wrote, no matter how bad it was, I came away with something I couldn't get from the laptop: authenticity.
I wasn't writing for validation anymore. I wasn't chasing the next hit or worrying about how quickly I could turn out another bestseller. I was writing because I had to. It was messy. It was human. It was mine.
The novel I'd abandoned—the one I'd given up on when I fell into the easy trap of magic—started to take shape again. It was clumsy at first. But each chapter felt better than the last, each line built on the one before it, until one evening, I sat back and looked at what I'd created.
It was… good. Not perfect. Not some grand masterpiece, but it was real, raw, honest.
I'd done it.
The next step was clear. I wasn't going to wait for the machine to guide me to success. I wasn't going to send it off to publishers and pray for approval.
This time, I would publish it myself.
I would put it out there in its raw, unpolished form, and let the readers decide. The idea of instant fame or a viral sensation didn't appeal to me anymore.
I didn't need that. What I needed was something real—something that came from my own effort, my own hands.
So, I hit 'publish'—and I waited.
The responses trickled in at first. Quiet comments, small but meaningful. People didn't rush to read it. It wasn't an immediate sensation.
But the feedback? It was real. People connected with it. Not just because it was polished or perfect, but because it was human.
Those who stayed with me—the readers who had followed my work before—came back with renewed interest.
They didn't care about the magic. They didn't care about the secrets I had been hiding. They cared about the story.
A month later, the numbers began to climb, slowly, steadily. Not enough to make me a household name, but enough to make me realize something important: This was enough.
The stories mattered. The connections mattered.
I closed the notepad, my fingers still tingling with the satisfaction of real, raw effort. It wasn't about the magic. It wasn't about the hype.
It was about the stories I had to tell—and for the first time in a long time, I was telling them my way.
The laptop sat untouched in the corner of my office, gathering dust. And for the first time, I felt nothing. No yearning. No temptation. Just peace.
The next chapter of my career was mine to write—and I was ready.
And when I looked at the laptop, I knew that I had made the right decision.
I didn't need the magic. I didn't need the shortcuts or the quick fix. All I needed was to write.
And that was enough.