The scent of saltwater lingers in the air. Bioluminescent algae pulse across the shoreline. No stars shine tonight; instead, the sky churns like liquid metal, a deep, swirling gray. Beneath this sky, Charamaynne steps cautiously on the sand, feeling it shift and sink underfoot, as if it’s alive and pulling their down into some ancient secret.

S/He’s lucid. S/He knows this is a dream — it has to be. The world around them stretches too wide, like a memory washed out by time, yet sharp as a knife. S/He glances down, their fingers flexing as if to test their body's boundaries, but their hand is transparent, fading in and out, translucent like water. The Lucid Sea, s/he thinks, or maybe s/he speaks, their voice drifting away in the low tide. S/He read once about this place, this dreamscape that those who know say comes to you only once — and you might never wake from it.

A figure appears on the horizon, barely visible against the shifting sky. It’s hard to focus on them; they seem to blur and flicker like a half-forgotten face. S/He walks toward them, feet gliding over the wet sand, hardly leaving a trace. As S/He draws closer, the figure reaches out, their hand open as if to catch her. Their eyes are mirrors, reflecting the vast gray sky, swallowing light and giving nothing back.

"Who are you?" s/he asks, their voice thin in the echo of their own awareness.

The figure tilts its head, smiling faintly, and something passes between them, a thought or a memory. Suddenly, Charamaynne sees flashes: a lighthouse drowning in fog, the crackling of wet wood in an ancient fire, and their own hands reaching, touching — but for what, s/he can’t tell.

S/He’s swept away into the tide, drifting with the currents.

Vin'nyla’s world is confined to a small pod, its walls softly glowing with the light of countless screens. Each one streams an endless feed of curated information, tailored to their preferences—preferences s/he never chose.

S/He sits in their usual spot, legs crossed on the sterile floor, their eyes fixed on the largest screen. It flickers with headlines, entertainment, and warnings, all stitched together in a never-ending loop. A question bubbles up in their mind, one that’s been simmering for weeks now: What am I to do?

The system doesn’t answer. It never does. It only adjusts, suggesting paths, correcting their choices. Vin'nyla frowns. their world feels smaller every day, the walls of their echo chamber closing in, reinforcing their thoughts until they no longer feel like their own.

S/He feels tired.

Their gaze shifts to a smaller screen on the far wall, one s/he hasn’t touched in months. It’s dusty, dim, but still connected. S/He hesitates, then crawls over to it, their fingers trembling as s/he powers it on. The interface is clunky, outdated—a relic from before the algorithms became omnipresent. But it still works.

A sudden urgency grips them. Vin'nyla begins typing, their fingers flying over the keyboard. S/He doesn’t know exactly what s/he’s looking for, but the search feels like rebellion. Bits of information flood the screen, raw and unfiltered, fragments of forgotten ideas and suppressed thoughts.

The algorithm notices. The other screens in their pod flicker, the feeds shifting in real time to distract them, to pull them back into the controlled flow. But Vin'nyla doesn’t stop. S/He dives deeper, finding images and messages left by others—people like them.

One message stands out: You’re not alone.

Vin'nyla leans back, their pulse racing. The other screens return to their usual hum, the algorithm seemingly satisfied with their compliance. But something has changed. The isolation feels thinner, like a veil s/he can see through.

The Welcome Habitat was still, its glass corridors and synthetic gardens bathed in the pale glow of artificial dawn. For years, it had promised safety—a refuge from the unraveling world outside. Its climate was always perfect, its pathways immaculate, its air recycled to feel crisp and pure. But now, the hum of the Visitors resonated through its hollow expanse, seeping into walls and minds alike.

In the central plaza, where digital birds once sang endless loops of calm melodies, a single Visitor had appeared. It stood tall and silent, a pillar of shifting light and liquid form. Its presence warped the surrounding air, bending the Habitat’s symmetry into subtle impossibilities.

People no longer came near. Those who had touched the Visitor were gone now, their absence marked by faint imprints burned into the smooth floor. A few drones hovered at the edges of the plaza, their lenses scanning the anomaly, but even they seemed hesitant, as if their programming could sense something their circuits couldn’t process.

One person stood at the edge of the plaza, staring. They were one of the few who had remained in the Habitat since the Visitors began to appear, lingering in the hollowed-out semblance of order. Their steps were slow, cautious, as they approached the thing in the center of what had once been called the Garden of Welcome.

The Visitor shimmered, its surface rippling with distortions. The synthetic trees around it reflected not their smooth, familiar forms but jagged, fractal versions of themselves. As the person moved closer, the distortion grew sharper, pulling at the edges of their vision.

When their hand touched the Visitor, the world shattered.

They were no longer in the Welcome Habitat.

The transition was immediate, like falling through the surface of a mirror into the chaos beneath. The air here was heavy, its pressure pulling at their chest, and the ground beneath their feet was fluid yet unyielding. The Welcome Habitat’s comforting geometry had dissolved, replaced by a landscape of shifting lights and towering structures that folded and unfolded without logic.

Above them, the sky was a churning void, streaked with currents of static and bursts of incomprehensible color. Shapes moved through the haze, their forms flickering and incomplete, like holograms struggling to stabilize.

The Visitor was here too, its presence massive and overwhelming. Its surface no longer reflected the person’s surroundings but their thoughts, their memories, their fears. The synthetic calm of the Habitat was nowhere to be found.

"Who are you?"

The voice didn’t come from the Visitor. It came from the space itself, reverberating inside their mind. The words felt like pressure, sharp and unrelenting, forcing them to confront the question even as they tried to look away.

Shapes moved closer, emerging from the edges of the impossible landscape. They weren’t human, not anymore. Their forms flickered with static, their features half-formed, as though they were trying to remember what they had been. One of them stepped forward, its surface shifting until it wore the person’s own face.

"How much of you is real?" the voice asked again, louder now.

The person stumbled back, but there was nowhere to go. The space folded in on itself, the ground rippling like water, pulling them forward, closer to the Visitor. Its surface churned with images: fragments of the Welcome Habitat’s pristine gardens, flashes of a collapsing world outside, faces that felt familiar but whose names were long forgotten.

The surrounding figures multiplied, each one a distorted reflection of someone they had known or could have been. They reached out, their hands twisting into shapes that weren’t hands anymore, their mouths moving in silent questions.

"Choose," the voice commanded.

The ground beneath them fractured, opening into a vast abyss of light and noise. The person teetered on the edge, their balance slipping as the hum grew louder, a vibration that filled their body with unbearable tension.

"Choose what?" they whispered, their voice cracking under the weight of the question.

The Visitor leaned closer, its form expanding until it became everything—the sky, the ground, the figures surrounding them. Its surface flickered with possibilities: lives lived and unlived, futures that stretched endlessly forward, each one more fragmented than the last.

The Habitat was gone now, its illusion of safety erased. There was no path back, no exit. The Visitors were not here to invade or destroy. They were here to reflect, to consume, to remake.

As the person fell into the abyss, they understood. The Welcome Habitat had always been a simulation, a mirror held up to humanity’s last desperate hope. And the Visitors were mirrors too, showing them what they had created, what they had become.

Their life is a patchwork of normalcy. They drift in uniform rows, quiet, heads down, eyes glazed over. They wear gray, beige, muted colors that blur together—a spectrum of neutrals, each one like a shade of fog or rain. No one stands out. This is normcore perfected, a place where difference itself is suspect, and where meaning has been bleached out like color from old photos.

A visitor appears. S/He’s barely distinguishable, dressed like everyone else, in a nondescript coat and scuffed shoes, only a faint light pooling around them, pale as dawn. S/He stands, watching, blending in and yet somehow... present. 

As others pass, they feel it—just barely. A shiver. A prickling at the neck. Something foreign brushing against their usual routine, something that nags and lingers even after they leave, vanishing into the mass of gray. 

Another visitor sits alone, eating. Their gaze is fixed on a point in the distance, unfocused. S/He feels something shift inside, a small, delicate fracture in their routine. Their hand pauses mid-bite, and their mind wanders for the first time in months, perhaps years. 

The visitor touches their shoulder lightly—just a brush of fingers—and s/he feels it: a pull, an almost physical force, urging them to look up. S/He does, meeting their eyes. They are blank, unreadable, but there’s something in them that s/he recognizes. A spark, a shared understanding of what it feels like to be lost, to wander without a map. In that instant, s/he knows. S/He’s not alone.

Wordlessly, s/he moves on. Their presence ripples through the crowd like a quiet tremor, sparking tiny awakenings here and there. 

As the whir fades, s/he fades with it, merging back into the haze of normalcy. They carry on, the same yet changed, haunted by a faint, lingering sense of wonder.