The Resonance

Objects begin to manifest their agency, eroding the visitors' view of the universe.

Every object holds a concealed essence, a reality below awareness. They're thinking, living forms with consciousness, with reality of their own.

The objects stir and form networks, communicating with each other in unfamiliar language.

Habitats become living spaces, with buildings, cars, and even infrastructure working in concert with a shared will. Some visitors run in horror, and others attempt to understand and coexist with this new life form.

The objects don't come in from another planet, but a new dimension—one in which matter and consciousness blur one with the other. They have traveled in an attempt to introduce visitors to a new reality, in which the chasm between subject and object no longer holds sway.

Dwellings are now symbiotic spaces, in which everyone lives with objects in harmony, with each respectful of the other's agency. Technology turns away from manipulation and towards collaboration, with machines and tools working in concert with, not at, humans.

The gap between living and not living no longer holds any sway.

The visitors are surrounded by the concert of objects who have become companions to them. 

The sun sets, and the visitors feel a familiar buzzing resonate through their form. They smile.

We All Fall Down

Zhi emerges out of the shadow, moving slow, deliberate. S/He is dressed in mending cloth, their face hidden behind a mask of shards of glass and wire.

“You’re one of them,” Ky says, their voice muffled but level.

Zhi cocks their head, thinking. “One of what?”

“One of the ones who watched,” s/he says, creeping a little nearer. “Watched while everything fell apart.”

The accusation bites deep.

Ky wobbles, their hands clenching and unclenching. “Why have you come?”

Zhi looks at it, its markings glinting softly in dim light. “I have come to understand,” s/he says. “To learn what is left, and must continue.”

Ky spits out a laugh, its sound acid. “Nothing’s left to carry. Ghosts and ash, that’s all.”

“Not true,” Zhi says, their eyes moving to the flower at its feet. “The life remains, even in crevices.”

The two stand motionless for a long, quiet interval. 

Finally, Ky comes to life and talks. "If you're here to learn, then you have to see what we saw."

S/He offers a hand, and Zhi takes it. Hand in hand, they move deeper into the ruins.

And there, buried under heaps of ash and debris, stands a machine, behemoth and sleeping, its face etched with the same inscrutable symbols etched into their epidermis. 

The visitors watch it closely. "We made it to save us," Ky says.

Ky touches the face of the machine, resting a hand against its metal faceplate. 

"I see now," Zhi breathes. "The machine did not kill you, then."

Ky shudders in their voice. "So then, then, what?"

Zhi turns, radiating a new light in their form. "The fear of falling," s/he says, "when you could no longer stand together."

Dreams

The sky opens at exactly 3:07 PM, but time is a concept the visitors don't bother considering. They spill out like ink, their bodies composed of forms not quite liquid and not quite light.

One visitor-a media representative emanating colors that say joy and mild gastrointestinal distress-prods at a car, now rusted into a decent semblance of modern art. The car suddenly opens into a flower of hammers, as if to contest its own irrelevance. The visitor does not bat an eye, but simply absorbs the hammers into their mass. Hammers, after all, are good for plying recalcitrant objects for memories.

They're here for one reason: to harvest Earth's dreams. Dreams are their fuel, their art, their raison d'être, though they'd never admit to speaking French. But Earth's dreams are strange now, warped by centuries of human absence and an over-ambitious AI that once tried to terraform the moon into a giant taco. One dream the visitors uncover involves a sentient typewriter plotting world domination. Another revolves around a library where all the books whisper insults. One visitor eats both dreams anyway, their form briefly shifting into the shape of a very disappointed typewriter.

 

They are archivists of chaos, cataloging not what was logical or important but what was delightfully unnecessary.

 

Their forms stretch and twist, morphing into a single colossal being shaped like an inside joke nobody remembers. They hum together, a sound like static and laughter, and Earth itself seems to vibrate in response.

 

Symmetry

Zhi's eyes are focused on an exploding hologram of twin universes - one ungrounding itself upon the horizon, it then draws back against itself. A ripple maddening alone.

"Wrong," Zhi whispers. "If the anti-universe holds up a mirror to us, then there shouldn't be noise. Everything should align."

Ky leans against the console, sipping tea without being bothered by the chaos. "Unless the noise is the point. What if they're trying to talk to us?" 

Zhi stiffens. "Talk?" 

Ky shrugs. "If they're running backward, maybe their end is our beginning. Maybe we are interlocked." 

No reply came from Zhi. Fingers blurred over the keyboard as ripple became louder. They translated the sound it made, a low, resonant hum, oscillating like a heartbeat. Then came the numbers. Primes. A message.

"They're counting," Zhi whispered. His voice quivered. "But backward."

The ripple grows stronger. The lab groans, the lights trembling, almost as if between two worlds. Time falters for Zhi, each second folding onto itself. There is something to the projection: a mirror image of themselves in a lab where time flows backward, lost in contemplation. The anti-them arrives; reaches out what may be the other side of darkness.

"Zhi, refrain," Ky cautions but too late. Zhi touches the surface, and the lab dissolves in splendor.

For an unending moment, Zhi sees everything: that symmetry of existence, a cosmic dance in which universes ebb and flow like rivers into and out of each other. The anti-universe does not speak in words, it has overwhelming presence.

You are the echo.

And then, darkness. The lab returns, relatively silent, ordinary, and typical. The ripple is gone; it has erased data. Zhi practically collapses into a chair, head spinning. 

Ky kneels beside them. "What happened?" 

LaHaNgAh Zasonga. "It does not say much," with a laugh, "they have had us in the echo."