My eyes snapped open, staring at the white ceiling studded with square lights. It was the same view I'd woken up to last week. The only thing I remember.
At least for now.
My eyes shifted to my hand, then jerked to the window. A strange reflection that was mine, white hair, black eyes, clad in a white office uniform.
Then, a hologram buzzed to life above my desk with a soft, blue pulse.
[Morning shift over]
[Time: 4:00]
The buzz jolted me awake from my stupor.
I raised my hands and stretched my arms. A yawn split my jaw open, a testament to hours logged in this sterile box. The yawn was a biological invoice for a morning of labour that my mind couldn't account for.
From the chair, I picked up my black coat, hanging it on my arm.
Stepping out into the narrow hall.
The lights flickered out, like they had been waiting for me to leave. All rooms stood closed.
Hearing the sound of my footsteps,
maybe I was the last one out. Though it was strange, the hall was never deserted during shift change. Then my gaze fell upon the elevator. People were gathered around it.
Whispering onto line-comms attached to their ears. Talking to someone, or someone unreal. I walked up to the elevator, casually leaning against the wall beside it, waiting.
After a moment, the elevator arrived.
I stepped inside with some others. I stood at the edge of the glass elevator. Below, the sector unfolded, visibly tall glass buildings that reflected the dawning sun, holograms beneath the street that people ignored, drones hovering everywhere. People whispered among themselves, and some strolled beside robots beneath the street.
Busy among themselves.
All of this, I wondered how long it had taken to build.
And all of this turning into ruins.
Then the elevator buzzed, a hologram flickered, and the elevator stopped.
[Ground floor]
Bringing me back to my senses.
I stepped into the lobby. It buzzed with holograms, people, and receptionist robots. Of course, everything left will be handed over to the robots.
In the lobby's center stood a fountain, its water a perpetual, silent roll, a new technology the company was proud of.
Beautiful yet utterly pointless.
I stepped outside. Sunlight spilled across my face, and I threw up a hand, a shield to my eyes.
A hologram popped into existence beside my shoulder.
[Goodbye, come visit again!]
Of course I will, I thought regularly. I could understand why people ignored these holograms.
I turned, the bus was already at the stop. A stroke of luck.
Yesterday, it got late and I reached home late at night.
I hurried to the bus, swiped my card, and it let me inside.
Gladly, the seat beside the window was empty. I tilted my head outside. People wearing blue glasses, fingers moving on invisible screens.
Even the atmosphere inside the bus was silent. It wasn't like there were no people. But all of them were busy with their own problems, chatting on line-comms or clicking on invisible screens.
The bus lurched into motion, turning the sector outside into a blur of sliding images.
I took out my phone from my pocket. A deliberate anachronism. He chose the weight in his hand over light in the air. Seems this guy didn't like invisible screens. It wasn't like he was poor, that he couldn't afford them. He intentionally did it. I stretched my neck, staring at the bus ceiling.
Then, strangely, the memories surfaced. Not like recall, but a vessel being filled. His family, his quiet life, his friends. Though he had only one, really, a voice on a line-comm he'd never met. But when I arrived, my different behaviour, she noticed instantly, and I haven't heard from her since.
I turned on my phone and scrolled. My only memory from his perspective was of him pointing a lens at me. The rest of his gallery told a different story: snapshots of stolen beauty, sunlit leaves, urban wildlife, the unguarded smiles of colleagues he'd never truly known.
I turned off the phone. What a life I stole. A life that didn't belong to me.
Then the bus died between stations. No chime, no buzz, no soft blue pulse of hologram. It was strange, too strange. As long as I have been here, a week of routines, it never happened.
Is this world a victim of Reverence? A question passed through my mind. No, I am just overthinking it.
An unsettling silence fell, waiting. People stepped out of the bus, murmuring to themselves that it was a bug, blaming the system.
I drew a long breath, held it, and released it.
"It's only a bug," I convinced myself.
I stood and stepped. My head turned sharply, a drone clipped the air where I had been, its chassis scratching my arm.
I turned around to look. Everyone was frozen, staring at the sky. I swallowed. My eyes lifted with theirs.
My eyes widened. Above us, the sky fissured. From the breach spilled impossible light, vicious white, drowned blue, and the void black of between spaces. Like two different realities collapsed.
The Reverence.
A figure tumbled from the crack, righted herself, and stood upon the air as if it were solid.
Her hair was a shock of silver-white; her eyes held the pale, pitiless blue of a winter sky.
She raised her hand to her mouth, as if testing a microphone.
"Uhm, uhm."
The name came to me from the constellation: Child of the First Blossom. Reverie from the Umbral Convocare group, the mediators between constellations and mortal clay.
Reverie turned to look at us. She clapped her hands, smiling.
"Hello, mortals," she chirped.
"Life treating you well? I have fantastic news."
A murmur of confusion rolled through the crowd.
She beamed. "You have been selected as participants of Reverence! And the fun part?"
She leaned forward conspiratorially. "You'll be granted some unique powers."
Another victim world, I thought.
My mind numb, a statue of flesh, and for a heartbeat, her arctic gaze swept over the crowd and seemed to pause, to see the ghost machine, me.
With a final, beatific smile, she turned.
"I hope you enjoy this." She clasped her hands, smiling.
"We shall meet again."
And dramatically, her form dissolved into a shower of pale light, leaving behind a few floating blue cuties that winked out of existence.
My legs began weakening. This was the feeling called fear?
A flat, blue screen appeared in the air in front of every person. People whispered among themselves.
"Is this a game?" someone said.
"Maybe it's a new technology introduced," said another.
"Maybe it's a good thing," a voice offered.
Then the panel flickered in front of me.
[Ordeal 00: Self-Acceptance
Location: Sector
Detail: The ordeal will manifest your core truth.
Condition: Accept that truth.
Reward: 500 fragments
Failure: -
Time limit: 30 mins]
Self-Acceptance.
I stared, ice flooding my veins. I knew how this worked. The knowledge was just there, a dark certainty.
But how did I know all of this?
This wasn't as simple as it seemed. It was a psychic interrogation. It wouldn't show you your truth, it would force-feed it to you, raw and screaming, until your sanity cracked. It would mine your memories, analyze every flinch of your soul, and if you rejected the things from your past that you hide, you died.
I could only stare.
Before I knew it,
it had already started.