The numbers appeared without warning. A faint red interface hovered in front of my eyes, perfectly clear no matter where I looked. At first I thought it was some strange afterimage, but when I blinked and rubbed my eyes the text remained. 364 DAYS 22 HOURS 14 MINUTES. Global Outbreak Countdown. My heart started racing as I stared at the timer. For years I had lived with a quiet fear that something terrible would happen to the world. Pandemics, collapse, something beyond human control. People always called it paranoia.
Doctors said anxiety. Friends joked that I watched too many disaster documentaries. Yet now the proof floated in front of me. I should have been terrified, and I was, but there was also something else buried beneath the fear. Relief. I had not been crazy after all.
The relief faded quickly when reality settled in. One year. That was how long the world had left according to the countdown. I spent hours staring at it, watching the seconds move with cold precision. Eventually I gathered the courage to tell my parents. They were sitting in the kitchen while my mother fed my baby sister in her chair. I tried to explain what I was seeing, the interface and the timer that only I could see.
My voice sounded desperate even to my own ears. My mother looked worried, the way she did whenever I talked about the future like it was some approaching disaster. My father, however, looked irritated. To him I was still the nineteen year old college dropout who had wasted his chance at a normal life.
The conversation ended exactly the way I should have expected. My father did not yell immediately. Instead he stared at me with that familiar expression of disappointment. He said I was imagining things again and told me to stop filling my head with nonsense. When I insisted the timer was real, his patience finally snapped. The argument turned sharp very quickly.
He blamed my grandfather again, just like he always did. According to him the old man had poisoned my mind with hunting trips, survival lessons, and talk about preparing for things that would never happen. Hearing that made something twist painfully in my chest. My grandfather had been the only person who actually listened to me.
The moment my father started cursing the old man I could not stay inside anymore. I pushed away from the table and walked out of the house before the anger could turn into something worse. The night air was cold when I stepped outside, but it helped clear my head.
The countdown was still there, floating quietly in front of my vision as if nothing had happened. 364 DAYS 19 HOURS. I stood in the yard staring at the numbers and wondering what I was supposed to do with this knowledge. If the timer was real, the world was heading toward something catastrophic and nobody would believe me until it was far too late.
He walked down the driveway, breathing heavily as the red timer continued hovering in his vision. 364 DAYS 18 HOURS. He laughed quietly, though there was no humor in it. "Crazy, right?" he muttered to himself. "That is what they think." For a moment he thought about his grandfather again, about the hunting trips and the quiet lessons about being prepared for anything. Then suddenly a faint blue glow appeared in front of him. Another screen slowly formed in the air. He froze.
Dimensional storage unlocked......
Information flooded into his mind as if the system itself was explaining the rules. One hectare of space. Time frozen inside. Only non living objects allowed. He could store anything he touched. The knowledge was both unbelievable and terrifying.
4 Months Later
It has been four months since the countdown appeared, and every single day the number in my vision keeps dropping. I do not panic anymore when I see it. Instead it reminds me of the same thing again and again. I need supplies, and I need a real shelter. The wooden house I grew up in would be a death sentence when the world collapses. Wood burns, wood breaks, and wood cannot stop desperate people. I have to prepare not only for whatever virus or plague is coming, but also for humans. Zombies might be monsters, but humans without laws will be far worse.
People are already violent even with rules and police watching over them. Remove those rules and the world becomes something else entirely. I have read enough history to know what happens when society breaks. Supplies will dry out within weeks. Supermarkets will be empty within days. After that, people will start fighting for food, fuel, and medicine. Betrayal will become normal. Killing will become common. Some will even resort to cannibalism. Just imagining it sends a cold shiver through my spine. I have seen those scenes in nightmares and dreams long before the countdown appeared, and now those fears feel less like imagination and more like memories from the future.
Preparation requires money. A lot of it. And I do not have the luxury of time to build wealth slowly. So I used the one advantage I was given. My dimensional storage. With one hectare of space where time does not move, moving goods became ridiculously easy. At first I kept things small. Luxury watches, expensive vases, antique statues. Rich people hate taxes and love secrecy. I simply moved their valuables across borders without anyone ever seeing the cargo. Customs checks meant nothing when the items were literally stored in another dimension. Word spread quickly among the wealthy. Within months I was making millions just by moving things no one else could move.
But money attracts attention. Even when I tried to stay anonymous, my name started circulating in certain circles. People wanted the man who could move anything anywhere. The government noticed as well. They had no proof of anything illegal, but I could feel the pressure building. Being on a watch list without evidence is a dangerous place to be. That meant one thing. I had to move faster. If I was going to break the law, I might as well go all the way. So I took a step that would make any sane person hesitate. I entered the drug trade. It was ugly, but the profits were enormous. In that world nobody asked questions as long as deliveries arrived on time. And with dimensional storage, deliveries were impossible to intercept.
Money started flowing faster than I had imagined. Millions turned into hundreds of millions, and eventually billions. The numbers inside my overseas accounts kept climbing until they finally crossed five billion dollars. When that happened, I knew it was enough. Enough to build shelters, buy land, secure supplies for years. I returned to the city near my home, but I did not go back to the house. I was still angry about the way things ended that night. Still angry about the things my father said about my grandfather. But anger will not last forever. When the outbreak finally begins, I will move them somewhere safe. Then they will see the truth. Then they will understand that I was never crazy. And maybe, finally, everything between us will be fixed.