"Okay," Marcus repeated. "That’s a stop error. It sounds scary, but it’s the computer’s way of putting on the emergency brakes. Do you have a flash drive?"

"Go," Marcus said. "Don't open anything else. Connect to the Wi-Fi, open your browser, and go straight to Blackboard. Your thesis should be auto-saving to the cloud if you used your university storage."

It looked like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. He pressed call.

The verified primary help desk number for the University of Mississippi is . This number should be published on all internal departmental resources, syllabi (for faculty/student use), and IT support documentation.

The voice on the other end wasn't robotic. It was human. It was calm. It sounded like the eye of a hurricane.