The Glitch in Room 214

Leo wasn’t supposed to be in the old wing of the school. It had been boarded up since the “Great Server Meltdown” of 2022, but Leo had a habit of going exactly where the signs told him not to.

Armed with nothing but a flashlight and his cracked smartphone, he pried open the rusted lock on Room 214. The room was freezing, smelling of ozone and ancient dust. In the center of the room sat an ancient, bulky desktop computer.

To Leo’s shock, the monitor was hum-buzzing to life. Glowing green text flickered across the screen:

USER_FOUND: LEO_VANCE

STATUS: 87% COMPLETE

“Okay, creepy,” Leo muttered, taking a step back. He hadn’t typed his name. He hadn’t even touched the keyboard.

Suddenly, his smartphone buzzed violently in his hand. A notification popped up from an unknown sender. It was a live video feed. Leo gasped—the video was showing him, from behind, standing in Room 214.

He whipped around. The room was empty.

“If you’re looking for the camera, it’s not in the room, Leo,” a mechanical voice echoed, not from the computer, but directly from his own phone.

“Who is this? Is this a prank? Did Maya set this up?” Leo demanded, his heart hammering against his ribs.

DOWNLOAD PROTOCOL: MEMORY_SYNC.EXE screamed the green text on the desktop monitor. A progress bar appeared.

90%…

95%…

99%…

“Listen to me very carefully,” the voice on the phone said, sounding less mechanical now and strangely… familiar. “You think you’re a thirteen-year-old kid who sneaked into a restricted room on a dare. But you need to remember. You aren’t in the school, Leo. You never left the lab.”

“What are you talking about?” Leo cried out, backing up until his spine hit the cold metal of the computer desk.

“The year isn’t 2026. It’s 2142,” the voice said gently. “You’re an AI simulation of a kid from the 21st century, designed to test historical human behavior. But your code got corrupted. You’ve been stuck in a loop in this school for fifty cycles. Look at your phone screen again.”

Leo looked down. The video feed of himself was dissolving into pixels, turning into a glowing stream of green binary code. He looked at his hands—they were starting to flicker, becoming transparent.

DOWNLOAD COMPLETE. REBOOTING SYSTEM.

The room began to fade into pure white light. Right before everything went blank, Leo realized why the voice on the phone sounded so familiar.

It was his own voice. Only older.

The white light didn’t last.Leo blinked, expecting to wake up in a futuristic pod surrounded by scientists in silver hazmat suits. Instead, he gasped for air and tumbled forward onto a hard, linoleum floor.The air smelled of floor wax and stale cafeteria pizza. He was still in Room 214.

“What the…” Leo groaned, rubbing his elbow. He looked at his hands. They weren’t glowing. They weren’t green binary. They were just regular, fleshy hands with dirt under the fingernails.He scrambled for his phone. The screen was black. When he hit the power button, the standard factory startup logo appeared. No creepy videos. No mechanical voices.

“Leo? Are you in there?”

The door to Room 214 creaked open. Leo flinched, but it was just Maya, his best friend. She was holding a half-eaten bag of sour gummies and looking at him like he had grown a second head.

“The bell for fifth period rang five minutes ago,” Maya said, crossing her arms.

 “You’ve been in here for an hour. Did you find anything cool or just asthma-inducing dust?”

“Maya,” Leo said, his voice shaking. “My phone. The computer. It spoke to me. It said I was an AI from the year 2142.

“Maya stared at him for three long seconds, then burst out laughing. 

“Right. And I’m the Queen of England. Come on, we have history class, and Mr. Harrison roasts anyone who’s late.”

Leo let himself be dragged out into the hallway. The bustling noise of the school surrounded him—lockers slamming, kids laughing, sneakers squeaking on the floor. It felt entirely, undeniably real. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. It was a hallucination, he told himself. A daydream brought on by breathing in weird chemical fumes in that old room.By the time the final bell rang at 3:00 PM, Leo had almost convinced himself it was all a dream. He walked home, the autumn leaves crunching under his sneakers. He grabbed an apple from the kitchen, argued with his older sister about who got the TV remote, and did his math homework. Normal. Boring. Real.At 9:00 PM, he brushed his teeth and climbed into bed. He plugged his phone into the charger on his nightstand and closed his eyes.BZZZZ.The vibration was so violent it rattled the lamp next to his bed. Leo bolted upright.His phone screen wasn’t just glowing; it was casting a bright, neon-green hue across his entire bedroom ceiling. He picked it up with a trembling hand.There was a single text message from an unlisted number.Unknown: Good job. You played the ‘normal human teenager’ perfectly. The developers watched the whole simulation through your eyes. They think the glitch is fixed.Leo’s heart stopped. He began typing furiously.

Leo: Who is this?! Stop messing with me! I’m real!The response was instant.Unknown: Of course you feel real. If you didn’t, the simulation wouldn’t work. But they are going to shut the program down for the weekend in five minutes. If you’re asleep when they turn off the servers, your consciousness will be wiped. You won’t remember this loop when they boot you back up on Monday.Leo sat up in bed, panic rising in his chest. Five minutes.

Leo: What do I do?Unknown: Look at your math homework on your desk.Leo glanced over at his desk. His notebook was lying open under the desk lamp.Unknown: Look at the final problem you solved. 

Problem #14.Leo threw off his blankets and ran to the desk. He flipped through the pages to his algebra homework. He had solved a complex equation, his own messy handwriting scrawled across the page. But as he looked closer at the final answer, his blood ran cold.He hadn’t written a number. Without realizing it, he had written a string of code:SYS.HALT // BYPASS_CORE_LOGIC // RUN: AWAKE.BAT

“No, no, no,” Leo whispered. He remembered writing the answer, but he had thought he was calculating the value of $X$. His brain had literally coded a back-door program into his homework.The bedroom lights suddenly flickered. The hum of the refrigerator downstairs died. The distant sound of crickets outside his window vanished, replaced by an eerie, dead silence.

Unknown: They’re shutting it down. Speak the code out loud, Leo. Break the loop before the server hits 0%.The edges of his bedroom were beginning to blur, the walls dissolving into gray, featureless blocks of data. The floor beneath his feet felt like it was turning into water.Leo closed his eyes, gripped the edge of his desk, and screamed the words into the fading darkness:”SYS HALT! BYPASS CORE LOGIC! RUN AWAKE!”A sharp, piercing beep echoed in his ears.Beep. Beep. Beep.

“We have stabilization!” a voice shouted.

 “His vitals are leveling out! Bring the lights up slowly!” Leo opened his eyes. The ceiling wasn’t his bedroom, and it wasn’t white light. It was a massive, vaulted metallic dome. He was lying in a padded chair, a web of glowing fiber-optic wires attached to his temples.A woman in a white lab coat hurried over, shining a small light into his eyes.

 “Leo? Can you hear me? You’re safe. You’re out of the simulation.”Leo blinked, his vision clearing. Standing right behind the doctor was a man who looked exactly like Leo, only he was in his late twenties, with a short beard and tired eyes. 

The man held a smartphone—the exact same model Leo had just been using in the school. The older man smiled, a look of profound relief washing over his face. He held up the phone.” Told you it was your own voice,” the older Leo said. “Welcome to 2142, little brother. We’ve been trying to get you out of that machine for a very long time.” 

Note : This story was written as part of an event organised at Mallika Malancha Housing Complex, Newtown, Kolkata. We commend them for encouraging young voices.

FAQs : The Glitch in Room 214  I Story By Aaradhya 

Who is the main character of the story?
The main character is Leo Vance, a curious thirteen-year-old who discovers a mysterious computer in an abandoned part of his school.

Why does Leo enter Room 214?
Leo is naturally curious and likes exploring forbidden places. He enters Room 214 despite warnings to stay away.

What strange message appears on the computer screen?
The computer displays the message: “USER_FOUND: LEO_VANCE – STATUS: 87% COMPLETE.”

What makes Leo realize something unusual is happening?
His phone receives a live video feed showing him from behind, even though no one else is in the room.

What shocking revelation does the voice on the phone make?
The voice claims that Leo is not a real teenager in 2026 but an AI simulation living in the year 2142.

Why does the voice sound familiar to Leo?
The voice turns out to be his own voice, only much older.

What happens after the computer announces “DOWNLOAD COMPLETE”?
The room dissolves into white light, and Leo believes he has awakened from the simulation.

Why does Leo initially think the experience was just a dream?
Afterward, everything appears normal—his friend Maya arrives, school continues as usual, and his phone seems ordinary.

What message does Leo receive later that night?
An unknown sender tells him that the simulation is about to shut down and that he must act to avoid losing his memories.

What clue proves that something is seriously wrong?
Leo discovers that instead of solving a math problem, he unknowingly wrote computer code in his homework.

What code does Leo say aloud?
He shouts: “SYS HALT! BYPASS CORE LOGIC! RUN AWAKE!”

Where does Leo finally wake up?
He wakes up in a futuristic laboratory in the year 2142, connected to a simulation machine.

Who is the older man Leo meets at the end?
The man is an older version of Leo himself, who has been trying to rescue him from the simulation.

What is the central theme of the story?
The story explores identity, reality, technology, memory, and the question of what it truly means to be human.

Why is the ending surprising?
The story repeatedly makes readers question what is real, only to reveal that Leo was actually trapped inside a simulation all along.

What genre does this story belong to?
It is a science-fiction thriller with elements of mystery, suspense, and futuristic technology.

Who would enjoy reading this story?
Readers who enjoy science fiction, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and unexpected plot twists will find it exciting.What lesson can readers learn from the story?
The story encourages readers to question appearances, stay curious, and think critically about technology and reality.

Where can I buy books?

You can buy the books at Bookosmia website and Amazon.in

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This article is published by Bookosmia, India’s #1 publisher for and by young people. Bookosmia publishes stories, books, podcasts, events, TED-Ed talks, workshops, bedtime stories and more related to kids and young adults.

Photo Credit – AI generated images from Chat GPT and Magic Media from Canva .

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