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.