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 is still, its corridors of glass and synthetic gardens bathed in the pale light of artificial dawn. It promises safety—a haven from the unraveling world outside. The climate is always perfect here, pathways immaculate, air recycled to feel crisp and pure. Now, the hum of the Visitors reverberates within its hollow expanse, seeping into the walls and minds alike.

In the central plaza, where digital birds sing endless loops of calm melodies, a single Visitor appears. It stands tall and silent, a pillar of shifting light and liquid form. Its presence warps the surrounding air, bending the Habitat's symmetry into subtle impossibilities.

People no longer come near. Those who touch the Visitor vanish, their absence marked by faint imprints burned into the smooth floor. A few drones hover at the edges of the plaza, their lenses scanning the anomaly, but even they seem hesitant, as if their programming senses something their circuits cannot process.

One life form stands at the edge of the plaza, staring. They are one of the few who remain in the Habitat since the Visitors began to appear, lingering in the hollowed-out semblance of order. Their steps are slow, cautious, as they approach the thing in the center of what was once called the Garden of Welcome.

It writhes, its face twisting as distortions roll across its skin. The trees reflected in its surface show nothing like their smooth, classic outlines but fractured, fractal versions of themselves. Closer still, it takes that distortion and sharpens it further, pulling at the edges of the imagination.

When their hand brushes the Visitor's, the world shatters. They no longer stand within the Welcome Habitat.

It is a transition in an instant, like falling through the surface of a mirror into chaos below. The air here is heavy, its pressure pulling at their chest, and the ground beneath their feet feels fluid yet unyielding. The comforting geometry of the Welcome Habitat dissolves, replaced by a landscape of shifting lights and towering structures that fold and unfold without logic.

Above them, the sky churns, streaked with currents of static and bursts of incomprehensible color. Shapes move through the haze, their forms flickering and incomplete, like holograms struggling to stabilize.

The Visitor is here too, its presence massive and overwhelming. Its surface no longer reflects the life form's surroundings but their thoughts, their memories, their fears. The synthetic calm of the Habitat is nowhere to be found.

"Who am I?"

This is not the voice of the Visitor. This is the space, reverberating in the brain. The words feel like pressure, sharp and insistent, refusing to let them turn away from the question.

Shapes move closer, emerging from the edges of the impossible landscape. They are not human, not anymore. Their forms flicker with static, their features half-formed, as though they are trying to remember what they had been. One of them steps forward, its surface shifting until it wears the life form's own face.

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

The life form stumbles back, but there is nowhere to go. The space folds in on itself, the ground rippling like water, pulling them forward, closer to the Visitor. Its surface churns with images: fragments of the Welcome Habitat's pristine gardens, flashes of a collapsing world outside, faces that feel familiar but whose names are long forgotten.

The surrounding figures multiply, each one a grotesque parody of someone they know or could have been. Reaching out, their hands contort into shapes that are not hands, their mouths moving in silent questions.

"Choose," the voice commands.

The ground cracks beneath them, splitting into a chasm of light and sound. The life form sways on its edge, their balance precarious, as the hum escalates, a vibration that racks their body with intolerable strain.

"Choose what?" they croak, their voice hoarse with the weight of the question.

The Visitor leans in closer, its form swelling until it is everything—sky, ground, and the figures surrounding them. Its surface flutters with possibility: lives lived and unlived, futures stretching endlessly forward, each one more fragmentary than the last.

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

And in the tumbling fall, they understand. The Welcome Habitat is an illusion, always a simulation of the last desperate hope for humankind. And the Visitors are mirrors, reflecting to the makers what they have brought forth, what they have 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.