New data received from the system.
I will not wait!
In previous cycles, he would wake up and wait. Wait for Raf. Wait for Mike. Wait for someone to bring him the next piece of the truth, like a patient waiting for test results.
But the ocean does not leave the memory easily. Those few seconds when the mist cleared. Millions of entities, the living currents, the green grid, the golden geometry suspended above it all, left a mark. Like a retinal burn: even after closing the eyes, the light remains.
I am a drop. And the ocean is out there. And I am lying on a bed waiting for someone to explain the shape of water to me.
He stood up.
Not the way he stood before Raf; that had been an announcement. But this time, the decision was to move. A subtle difference: an announcement requires an audience, while a decision requires only itself.
He looked at the mist. It was no longer just gray. Since the vision, he had begun to notice things he hadn't seen before, or had not possessed the visual language to name. Slight ripples in density. Directions in the movement of the silver spray. As if one current were flowing to the left, another rising slowly, and something — very far away — pulsing.
The mist is moving. Not randomly. There is what seems to be a system.
One step. Two steps. Three.
I'm focusing on intention, as Raf taught me. Not muscles. Intention.
And the mist responded. Not by clearing, but by shrinking gently around his path, as if making way for a narrow corridor through a liquid body.
Fine, here I go... But where to?
He didn't know the distance. So far, time and distance here are concepts closer to metaphor than measurement. But he felt a change in flavor. No other word could describe it. The mist around him became denser. Warmer? No, not warmth. A presence saturated with something like noise, but not sound. What is this? It feels closer to a low-frequency broadcast. Or a continuous hum.
Then he began to see.
Not just shadows this time, but shapes that seem familiar. Some moving. Some still. At varying distances, like stones scattered in a river.
The closest thing he saw: a wall. Or part of a wall. Floating in... nothingness. Gray stones stacked carefully, ending abruptly at a torn edge. Behind it, nothing. As if someone started building a room and then forgot. Or stopped believing it existed.
A little further: a staircase. Ascending in a slow spiral toward a non-existent ceiling. The first steps were solid. The last were translucent. As if their maker's coherence faded the higher the structure rose.
Fragments of incomplete memories. Pieces of lives that found nothing to hold them. Is this what it means to fade?
He stepped closer. The noise increased, not sounds, but a crowd of thoughts leaking from poorly sealed boundaries:
«... why are you late ...» «... closed door closed door closed door closed ...» «... I didn't mean to I didn't mean to I didn't ...»
The context is incomplete. These are half-thoughts. Broken loops. Each returning to its beginning before it can complete.
And the shadows here were not like the shadows he had seen before. Those were barely there. Mere vapors. Here, these shadows are closer to humans. Some wore clothes, not from a single era. He noticed that. Ah, these are welcome sights. After I started getting used to the sight of the textureless gray garment. Some wore what looked like a robe of coarse fabric. A coat with metallic buttons. Something he didn't know how to name, a head cover embroidered with silver threads that faded and returned.
But the details weren't stable. The coat's buttons appeared and vanished. The robe's color fluctuated between brown and gray. Some of them had facial features, or what seemed to be faces, rippled like a reflection on troubled water.
Do these people forget their own details, and the mist redraws them? Incorrectly, or incompletely perhaps. Or even from someone else's memory! I wonder what my face looks like? He said it, touching his face. As usual, there was no texture. Only boundaries.
Then he noticed him.
Not just because he was clearer than the others, but because he was much stiller.
A person crouched on a platform he had made himself. That was obvious, for the platform possessed the exact same visual "resolution." Around him, small geometric shapes rotated. Not decorations, closer to tools. He moved them with absolute focus, comparing one volume to another, discarding a shape and replacing it with another. Like a scientist in his lab, indifferent to the world outside its walls.
The face is unfamiliar. But the pattern? This pattern is glaring, familiar in some way. This is someone who seems to have spent a life — or lives — measuring the universe and categorizing it. Deconstructing it down to its primary elements.
He didn't look at the passersby. He didn't look at Adam. Entirely absorbed in his own system. Perfect coherence. Perfect isolation.
Adam tried to intrude, directing his perspective toward the seated figure, pushing a thought: «Excuse me. May I ask you about these geometric shapes that...» The transmission was cut. Adam felt a silent intellectual invasion, and a single, calm thought echoed in his mind: «What is the hidden force that binds the universe together, and how can we formulate its laws mathematically?» Adam tried to think or respond: What is this idea stuck in my mind?! The same thought kept echoing inside him, clearly coming from the seated figure. He hadn't moved. He hadn't even looked at Adam. It continued to reverberate quietly inside him until he decided to move away. What is the hidden force that... he seems busy and doesn't like to be interrupted.
A few steps away, five shadows held hands, their heads bowed. They gathered around something. A shared memory? Its edges leaked to Adam: the light of a fireplace. Children laughing. An old melody he didn't know but knew was beautiful. The shared memory protected them, giving them a solidity none of them possessed alone.
But the melody was fading. The children's laughter was turning into an echo. One child's face, in the memory, not in reality, became blank. Like a photograph eaten away by erosion from its edges.
Unlike the seated figure, he thrives alone. They cling to each other and lose themselves slowly. And neither of them is "wrong".
Then something changed around him. A pressure, or a density; neither word was precise. His vocabulary wasn't built for what he had begun to notice.
The same feeling from the previous visit, a weight preceding a presence, but this time it came from every direction.
The shadows around him fled. They didn't drift away, they evaporated. The memory circle unraveled in a second. The person who was engrossed in his measurements raised his head, for the first time, then faded into silence.
The corridor he had discovered became an empty corridor.
«Mike.»
He didn't appear. Reality rearranged itself, not in welcome, but in surrender. And behind him, Gabi. A mountain of silence.
Mike looked at Adam. Then looked around him, at the corridor he had crossed, the incomplete wall, the spiral staircase, the place where the person with the geometric shapes had been.
Mike didn't seem angry. He seemed interested. Then:
«No one asked you to come here.»
Adam noticed the way the thought arrived. It wasn't a question. Then he answered:
«No one asked me to stay in bed either.»
Mike raised his hand. Numbers of faint green light appeared in the air, floating and rotating:
«Your variance factor is dropping. From 0.7 to 0.4. An exceptional rate.»
Then he looked directly at Adam:
«Especially for a newcomer wandering without permission in zones whose rules he doesn't know.»
Adam tried to get more information. He pushed his thought: «How do shapes or light come out of your hand, and how do you control them?»
Mike waved his fingers. A perfect golden cube formed in the void between them. Rotating slowly. Its edges sharp as a blade.
«Concentrated will. The same thing you do when you take a step. But with a higher focus.»
Then the cube vanished.
«Your presence here consumes unusual resources.»
Adam looked around at the spot where the memory loop had stood, at the empty platform left by the entity engrossed in his measurements:
«Resources. Is that why they all fled when you arrived?»
Gabi's voice, like crushed gravel:
«Everything here has a price. Stability. Protection. Even the aether around you.»
One sentence. Then he returned to silence. But it said what Mike didn't: You aren't asking about the others. You are costing them.
Mike walked slowly. The mist bending around him like waves breaking against a rock:
«The coherence you build inside yourself is not just for your protection. It is the fuel that keeps the ceiling above all our heads.»
Adam looked at the empty platform again. The entity that was measuring and categorizing with perfect coherence was generating energy simply by existing. And the memory loop was consuming it to stay together.
Coherence produces. Fracture consumes. I am not a patient they are treating, I am a resource they are calculating.
«Fracture. Doubt. Contradiction.» Mike took a step closer. «These are not negative feelings, Adam. Destructive forces. Physical ones. Like rust eating away at iron.»
The image of the shadow swallowed in the [Margins] returned to his mind. The silent scream. The silence of satiation.
Mike raised his hand. His fingers opened slowly: «Until nothing remains but energy dust scattered by the mist.»
Silence.
Then in a lower voice, a tone he hadn't heard before:
«The system is fragile despite its strength, my boy.»
My boy. Amidst all this engineering coldness.
«And you have energy that could be a pillar. Or a demolition tool.»
Adam didn't answer immediately. He was thinking of something else. Of the memory loop that unraveled the moment Mike arrived. Of the entity that disappeared. Of the shadows that fled.
«You say coherence is fuel. And Raf said the Gap kills.»
He looked at Mike:
«If I combine the two equations, then I am not only in danger of fading. I am also an energy source you need. And all this protection, Raf, you, Gabi, isn't medical care.»
Adam paused for a moment, then continued:
«It's an investment.»
Mike looked at him. A look longer than necessary. The green data around him stopped rotating.
«You think you've begun to understand; prepare yourself. The real questions have not yet begun.»
Adam felt the conversation ending before he could get enough information... What is this world? I feel the absence of so many things, but I don't know exactly what they are. He tried to cling to one last thread: «Honestly, I don't understand anything. And most of my questions are without answers. Just tell me one thing. Is everything happening here real? I feel completely lost, I don't even know how much time I've spent here!»
A final look from Gabi. Long. Heavy. He said nothing.
Then Mike's thought appeared quickly: «Words like real, time... these are concepts broader than what you know, and they require a certainty much higher than what you possess.»
And they went out. Not dissolved: extinguished. One moment they were there. The next: nothing.
Adam remained standing in the middle of the corridor he had discovered.
The shadows began to return. Slowly. Cautiously. Like animals verifying the predator had left.
The memory loop did not return. The platform remained empty.
Mike didn't deny I'm an investment. He fell silent then said «Prepare yourself».
Fine.
I know three things now: Feelings are forces. The Gap kills. And coherence is fuel. And all these things mean I am not just a patient they are treating. I am a resource they are calculating.
And the question they don't want me to ask: Who owns the station?
He returned to his bed. More solid than when he had left it.
Because I've started to believe it exists.