The ceiling above Dr. Elias Venn was made of simulated stars.
They twinkled silently, almost convincingly, set against a navy-blue dome that mimicked the void of space. Elias blinked once. Then again. The sensation of waking felt... layered. As if memory peeled away from him in soft, curling strips.
He sat up, disoriented. His breath fogged in the chilled air. Around him, the dream chamber buzzed softly with biometric readings and haptic feedback pulses. Glass walls shimmered with translucent interface panels—neuromap diagnostics, waveform displays, latency trackers—all responding to his presence like silent servants.
"Session... ninety-one," Elias murmured, squinting at the status code. "What the hell...?"
He hadn't initiated a new drift. Not recently. His last conscious memory was… mundane. He had been in his lab at NeuroSys, reviewing data with Colonel Strasser. They were months away from live trials.
He looked down at his hands. Pale. Thinner. He touched his face, ran fingers through hair that had grown longer than it should've. His beard was several days in.
"System," he said aloud. "End session. Terminate simulation."
Nothing responded.
He stood, legs stiff. He scanned the pod. A time-stamp blinked in the corner of a diagnostic window:
DATE: 14.07.2045
Elias froze.
That was six years from today.
The room shivered. Not physically. Reality itself bent like heat above asphalt. He blinked rapidly, but the feeling persisted — the dream not quite finished, the waking not quite true.
Had they advanced Parallax without him? Did Strasser proceed with military implementation in secret?
He staggered to a console and placed his hand on the biometric reader. The panel flickered, refused access.
"Dr. Elias Venn," he stated. "Override protocol 9A. Authenticate."
Silence. The screen pulsed red.
"No such user profile," the interface replied in a calm, almost maternal voice.
The air in the chamber thickened. A sick twist of fear coiled in his stomach.
He turned to the wall. A reflection stared back: him, but not quite. His eyes were bloodshot. Lips dry. But what paralyzed him was what lay just behind his mirrored self—a message, handwritten in dark, shaky ink, scrawled across the synthetic wall of the chamber:
This is not your first drift.
He stumbled back.
A memory surged—uninvited, vivid.
Flames. Screams. A woman's voice: "Elias!"
Liora.
She was burning. No—he was burning.
No—she was already dead. Six years ago.
But then... was this the past? The future? A simulated echo?
The door behind him hissed open. A gust of cold air followed.
Footsteps.
He turned, half-expecting some faceless agent or orderly. Instead, it was her.
Liora.
Unchanged. Her dark curls, the tiny mole on her left cheek, her hospital bracelet—just like that night. She stepped into the room slowly, eyes wide, uncertain. A glass of water trembled in her hand.
"I wasn't sure you'd wake up," she said softly.
Elias staggered forward. "No... this isn't right. You—"
"I've missed you," she whispered. She reached out to touch him, her hand trembling.
The moment their fingers touched, her image shattered like glass.
Elias fell backward with a cry, landing hard on steel flooring.
Reality flickered again. And then—
He was somewhere else.
A dimly lit corridor stretched before him. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Rusted pipes ran along the ceiling. He looked down—his clothes were different now: a hospital gown. The chill of metal beneath his bare feet grounded him in this new layer.
Footsteps approached from around the bend. Heavy. Military.
He ducked behind a ventilation unit, heart pounding.
Two men in paramilitary gear rounded the corner, speaking in clipped German. He caught only fragments.
"Still inside... cognitive feedback loops... project compromised... volunteer's identity fragmented..."
"Dr. Venn?"
A voice. Not from the hallway. Inside his mind.
He gritted his teeth, trying to force the voice out.
"You need to go back in," it urged. "The system's unstable. You must find the original Liora."
"I don't—" he began aloud.
Another shift. The hallway blurred, tilted, and collapsed into static.
He was falling.
---
He awoke to whiteness.
Stark, sterile light beat down from overhead surgical lamps. He was strapped to a medical table, electrodes attached to his scalp and chest. Around him, a dozen monitors displayed overlapping EEG waves. A military officer leaned over him — Colonel Strasser, aged by several years.
"You're awake," Strasser said grimly. "Good."
"What's happening?"
"We had to isolate your mind in drift recursion. The system glitched after Session 78. You volunteered to test a patch. Liora's neural ghost was caught during the feedback cycle. You're the only one who can stabilize it."
Elias groaned. "No... she died years ago."
"Yes," Strasser said. "And no. What's in the system is her consciousness pattern, scanned during one of your unauthorized sync experiments. It's fragmented, but alive."
Elias closed his eyes. "And if I go back?"
"You extract her," Strasser said. "Or you stay there. Forever."
But the general's eyes said something else.
This wasn't rescue. This was containment.
---
He was back in the chamber again.
Only this time, the walls were covered in scribbles. Equations. Coordinates. Phrases like DRIFT 53: LIORA NEVER SPOKE and ASK HER WHAT YEAR IT IS.
Graffiti carved by himself. Or versions of himself.
In the far corner, a mirror.
He stepped toward it. His reflection didn't match.
The other Elias had grey in his beard. A scar across one eye.
"Welcome back," the older Elias said.
"What... who are you?"
"A failed drift. Like you. Like all of us. You're not getting out."
The younger Elias staggered backward. "That's not true. I can still—"
"There's no out," the reflection hissed. "We are the system now. Liora was never real. Not since Session 37."
The walls began to hum. A low-frequency vibration that rattled Elias's bones.
From behind him, Liora's voice, soft and sharp like a blade:
"You're not the only one who's awake."
He spun around.
No one there.
Only the screen blinking in the chamber:
**> PARALLAX REBOOTING
> SESSION 92-A**
---
Chapter One End.