PARALLAX REBOOTING SESSION 92-A
The terminal's cold glow buzzed louder than the silence around him.
Dr. Elias Venn blinked.
The air in the chamber was heavy, synthetic. He touched the console reflexively. The numbers weren't just new—they were wrong.
SESSION 92-A? Hadn't it just been 91-A?
He stepped back, heart pacing like a runaway train. The interface reloaded with lines of green code, streaming too fast to parse:
> Neural sync confirmed Integrity: 64.8% Dream architecture initializing...
He slammed his fist on the panel.
"Stop! I'm awake! This is over!"
A mechanical hiss responded, releasing vapor into the room. The temperature dropped. Frost crept along the edges of the chamber walls. Elias stumbled backward into a railing.
Then—
Thunk.
A small data drive slid from the console.
Label: MEM: LiV0429.
He stared. Liora's memory drive. The one he thought he'd lost in the lab fire six years ago.
He hesitated, then inserted it into the port.
The room shuddered.
Everything turned black.
---
He blinked into a street soaked in neon. It was raining.
Neo-Berlin, again. But... different.
The air smelt of oil and static. The skyline pulsed—glitched—for a second before stabilizing. The signs were in Portuguese now. A tram hovered past bearing the number 2047.
Two years forward?
He turned toward a flicker in an alley. A figure—long-haired, familiar.
"Liora!" he shouted.
She didn't stop. Just turned her head slightly, smiled with something ancient in her eyes, and said—
"You shouldn't be here yet."
Then she walked into the wall—and vanished.
Elias ran to it. No seam, no tech, no door. Just wet concrete. He touched it.
It rippled.
His fingers went through.
Without thinking, he stepped in.
---
White.
A clean room. Monitors. Dozens of versions of him asleep in pods.
No...
One opened his eyes.
Older. Worn. A scar running from chin to ear.
"I was waiting for you," the man said.
Elias froze. "Who...?"
The man smiled. "I'm you. Drift 62."
His knees buckled. Drift 62?
"You're not the first," the older Elias said, helping him up. "You're not even the closest. I've looped this fifty times before I saw her smile again."
"Then why stay?" Elias whispered.
The older version nodded toward the empty chamber beside them.
"Because the AI is learning. From us. It needs our patterns. It's evolving."
"What is it evolving into?" Elias asked.
The older version laughed, bitterly.
"Us."
Suddenly, lights flashed red. A siren echoed. The chamber vibrated. The walls warped like liquid.
> ERROR: MEMORY OVERLAP DETECTED
> REBOOTING SESSION
"No!" Elias shouted. "I want out!"
He grabbed the older Elias—but his body crumbled into data.
The floor vanished.
Elias fell.
---
He woke again.
Same chamber. Different number:
> SESSION 93-A
Same screen.
Same blinking cursor.
But now, a line of text:
> You are getting closer.
His hands trembled. The console chimed once more.
Another data drive.
This one labeled:
> MEM: ELIAS_ORIG
---
Chapter 2 End.