In Two: The Bridge to the Universe

The Fool

Chapter 1: Breath

I flick my lighter; it sparks.

Flick. Spark.

I flick it again, the flame roars to life.

I touch the flickering flame’s bluish heartbeat to the incense stick and watch as the ember catches. As smoke unfurls from it, I blow out the flame.

I exhale—and my room fades to black.

All that remains are spirals of incense smoke casting fractal patterns of light and shadow. Reality has become like the incense smoke—thin, shifting, impossible to hold. 

For a single, impossible second, the spiraling wisps circle me and coalesce into a perfect, unwavering circle, holding its shape against the laws of physics before dissolving.

I take a deep breath, and it feels like the particles that make up reality now breathe with me.

Deeper.

I hear a song begin to play inside me. Its chorus courses through my veins.

My breathing syncs to the sound—each inhale and exhale is a note. I ebb and flow with the peaks and valleys of this aethereal music.

When all the notes harmonize, I feel it—the universe is a song, and we are notes in it.

“Ring, ring.” 

The sound of my phone ringing cuts through the symphony.

The particles around me reconstruct the walls of my pod.

My arm feels heavy, as if trying to lift the emotional weight of this Great Depression. I look at my phone to see who called. “Unknown Number.”

They called at 3:33 p.m. No message left? It’s been twenty-two minutes. It’s always twenty-two minutes before something drags me back to the earthly realm—like I am tethered here by a cosmic leash.

Why is a force keeping me from exploring the other dimension?

I swear, if I could have even one more minute—I could find the answer I seek: Is this reality a simulation?

The loudspeaker in my pod then blares like it’s answering my unspoken question: “Attention residents: Please remain in your designated pods. Essential trips and services are scheduled. Remember: Compliance is survival.”

If it is… where is the back door? How do I rewrite the code?

My phone reverts to the lock screen. A picture of Cillian lights up the display, his cheeky smile so wide it crinkles his eyes. Those eyes form a spotlight, illuminating the reason I choose to come back.

I take a breath to steady myself, but the act of my lungs filling with air feels heavy, like the air is weighted with something unnatural.

Which reality is the true one?

My psychiatrist has a name for my experiences of becoming one with everything—“dissociation.” He says “The music is an auditory hallucination.” Are the most profound moments of my life really just a glitch in my brain’s wiring?

A sharp “Tick” of the kitchen clock reminds me of the time. It must be getting close to when Cillian’s preschool lets out.

I look back at my phone, and my eyes catch a news headline on the “For You” page. The headline seems to buzz with a strange energy: “Quantum Entanglement: Physics Prove Two Separate Things Can Still Be One.”

I click on it. The article reads: “When a particle is split in two, the halves remain a whole. This suggests our universe may be a holographic simulation.”

My heart hammers against my ribs. “Separate, yet still one.” … My recommendations are too specific to feel like mere synchronicity. 

My thoughts keep echoing back at me through technology. What force could be behind this?

My feet feel strangely weightless against the floorboards. I need to stay here for Cillian.

“Stay.” The word triggers a memory—my therapist’s voice reaches through the chaos of my mind with calm authority: “To stay in the present moment, use a grounding technique. Name something you see, something you hear, something you feel.”

I see the dreary, grey sky outside my window.

I hear a siren blaring on the street.

My external reality is painted with shades of melancholy, as if someone brought a painting of doom and gloom to life.

I shudder.

The pulse I feel in my wrist proves to me that I am solid. I am still here.

But these synchronicities are becoming too loud to ignore. It feels like the fabric of the world is starting to fray.

I can’t tell if it’s reality that’s tearing apart, or just my own mind. I see shapes form in shadows—in a world that doesn’t believe in perfect circles.

Chapter 2: Dandelion Shield

My pod speaker blares static at full volume.

Then it screeches its announcement like it is yelling at me: “Keep inside, keep prudent!”

I sigh—but it comes out as a low roar.

I have heard: “Keep inside, keep prudent” over and over for three long years. First, they said: “The Emergency environmental lockdown will last two weeks.” Then it stretched out to a month. Now they just say, “We are hopeful it will end soon.”

I won’t let the static char my spirit the way the scorching sun has my hopes and dreams.

I force my legs to move. My body feels like a puppet I have to consciously operate. I grab my keys from the hook by the door. The cold, jagged metal feels real. Or is it a convincing facsimile of what “cold” and “jagged” are supposed to feel like? Every detail I notice makes me question if the world is built… or programmed. 

I open the door and the hallway stretches out before me, its beige walls and repeating carpet pattern looking unnervingly uniform. For a moment, I wonder—are these hallways really walls, or just looping texture files in some unseen code? The hallway air tastes stale and recycled, like it’s never met a tree.

Glancing around to make sure no one sees, I slip outside before my allotted time slot. 

A soft, digital voice chimes from a hidden speaker in the ceiling. "Reminder: School pickup for residents in Pod Building 808 is scheduled for 4:01 p.m." I keep walking, even though my jaw clenches.

My feet carry me to the only remnant of nature in our community—the kids’ schoolyard. The sun feels like a stage light, it’s casting shadows that stretch too long, too precise, like they’ve been rendered. 

I slip off my shoes, letting my bare feet form a rhythm of hope against the hard-packed earth, “Du ba du bop be” they pound against the dry ground. In my imagination, I paint a better world over this one, a green screen hiding the doomsday prophecy come true. 

I pretend the wind from my dancing is waking Gaia, and that she’s dancing with me. I see the brittle yellow grass turn green, and wave at me. A buffalo storms by shaking the ground. The gates melt away, the loudspeakers fall silent, and the parents come outside to talk to each other, their faces relaxed and open. A world built on connection. To each other. To the land.

I twirl past the empty flower beds, their dirt cracked and barren. I picture them full of dandelions, the flower that can grow through any crack in the pavement. I lean down to sniff their fragrance, but the real smell of dust and decay breaks the spell—the green screen vanishes.

“Dong.”

Parents arrive to pick up their kids. Before they get close enough to see me, I pretend to pick a small bouquet of my invisible flowers, tucking them safely into my pocket. 

As the others move closer, I drop my eyes to the ground, unwilling to see my own entrapment reflected in their faces. Today, I’m choosing to see life. I catch my son Cillian’s eyes, and his bright gaze is a small lantern in the gloom. 

“Mommy!”

The word cuts through every cosmic question, every ounce of existential dread. He runs toward me, his backpack bounces wildly behind him. Cillian. 

His curly golden-brown hair is a mess, there’s a smudge of blue paint on his cheek, and his shoelaces are untied. He sees me, and his face breaks into that gap-toothed smile from the photo. He stumbles as he runs toward me—a movement too imperfect for an animation loop.

His small body crashes into my legs, and I wrap my arms around him, pulling him close. I bury my face in his hair. This is real. He smells of playground dirt and a faint, sweet scent of the juice box from his lunch. With his small frame pressed against mine I feel his warmth, and the solid, undeniable weight of him. No simulation could code this. Or if it did… wrapped up in a hug, it doesn’t matter.

“Do you have my flowers?” He asks me. I take my imaginary bouquet out of my pocket, and hand them to him. He reaches for them, and takes a whiff “They smell like roses today.” We both giggle at our silly ritual.

“Still no word of rain?” one of the mothers asks the air. I know she isn’t talking to me. The only person who talks to me is Cillian… and the speakers.

“How can there be no rain in sight,” I murmur, “and the CO₂ levels haven’t dropped when we’ve been locked down for years?” I didn’t mean to say it out loud. Stern looks flash my way.

Then, a white delivery truck rattles past. On its side, emblazoned in bold red letters, is the company’s phone number. “1-800-UN-KNOWN.” Unknown Number… The 3:33pm caller. Am I under surveillance?

“Do you want to put us all at risk?” The woman says, her voice short as a fuse. “Some of us are actually trying to follow the rules.” I see fear widening her pupils, just before she turns her back on me.

Cillian, holding his invisible bouquet, takes a happy step towards the woman and her daughter. "I have flowers!" he beams. The woman turns, and hisses: “We don't associate with conspiracy theorists.” Then grabs her daughter's arm, and walks off.

Her words are like bitter tea spilled on my day. If only it were dandelion tea, something to detoxify my soul.

I weave my way through the parents with their ice cold eyes to get home with Cillian, I try to hold the image of a dandelion in my mind—resilient, defiant, a shield.

But the shield is fragile, and the parents' sharp looks pierce through it. A woman’s glare sharpens a familiar chorus in my head: “Hippy. Freeloader. Single mom.” That’s what they think of me, that’s all I am. The rhythm of shame takes over my song of hope, and drowns out everything else with it.

I may never bloom in the open without being weeded out by the gardeners that plant our reality.

Chapter Three: The Sun on the Corner

I pull out pencil crayons and paper for Cillian to colour. If I can’t do anything else, at least I can inspire his creativity. 

The blaring noise of TVs and computers pours through the walls from surrounding pods. The powers that be created a virtual world to obscure reality, but it creates noise in mine.

I look at our TV sitting in the corner, collecting dust bunnies, and feel proud. A monument to my victory against technological distraction aids. The screen’s black glass seems to hum in the background, as if it’s waiting for me to forget myself and turn it on. 

I go over to see what Cillian is drawing. Amongst grey pencil scribbles, he has depicted our pod community—concrete walls, blacked-out windows, a gate. The only colour beyond grey is yellow, he drew the sun's rays hitting everything.

It reminds me of my drawings when I was a kid, they bloomed with trees and flowers, and always had sun shining in the right corner, symbolizing happiness. Now I associate yellow with death—dead plants, dead eyes…The same sun that yields the power to make life possible on Earth is making my life impossible to bear.

I force a smile for him. “You did an amazing job drawing our community!” His smile beams up at me like the sun I remember as a child. “Do you like the color yellow?” Such innocence. 

“Yes,” I reply, keeping my mouth curved even as my eyes turn sad. I shiver despite the stifling heat. Burning tears well up, but I brush them away before Cillian sees.

“It’s my favorite.”

I can only hope this is easier for him than for me. I knew another way of life. This is all he has known.

“No, no,” I yell into the void, feeling myself start time travelling. “Time travel” is the name a therapist gave me for when traumatic memories drag me back into trauma states.

“Tock, tick, tock” goes the clock taking me back in time.

I am eighteen again, clutching my purse as I weave through downtown streets. The scorching heat makes each step feel like I’m running a marathon. I pass a newspaper stand, every headline screams ‘TEMPERATURES REACH LETHAL LEVELS WORLDWIDE TRIGGERING GLOBAL COLLAPSE.’ The papers are wilting in the heat, ink smearing from humidity.

Bodies are collapsed on the pavement and I don’t know if they are dead or just given up. Every shop and office building has a “CLOSED” sign on the door. Sirens blare from every angle, disorienting me.

Eyes follow me from the sunken faces, and the only sound is a constant, guttural scream, as if humanity has forgotten how to speak and can only cry out in pain. “Ahhh. Ah. Ahgh.”

I pinch my nose against the smell—rotting flesh. I will never forget this smell.

“Tick, tock, tick.” I’m back in the present, shaking—I can still feel those eyes following me. What happened to those people?

Cillian is looking at his drawing, oblivious. My gaze fixes on the gate he drew. I remember when they announced the plan to convert the city buildings into these communities: People cheered for the gates, desperate for order and safety from the chaos outside. They missed the fine print—that the gates keep us locked in. 

He looks up, and puts his small hand on my arm, "Mommy, your face is wet," he whispers. I didn’t even realize I was crying again. "Looking at your drawing brings me happy tears, sweetie." If they could give us a timeframe for smelling fresh-cut grass again, this would be more bearable.

“I have a question?” He asks, pointing to his drawing. “Ecopod? The pod is our apartment, right? What does Eco mean?” 

“It’s short for ecology,” I say. “That means living things—plants, trees, animals, people—and how we’re all connected.”  

“But there’s no plants. Or trees.” 

A pressure headache begins to pulse behind my eyes. “No,” I admit. “Not here. Not anymore.” 

Cillian frowns, his finger circling the blank white space where a tree might have been.

“Then… Why  is it called an Ecopod?” His voice is soft, but it lands in my chest like a heavy blow. His question dismantles everything we’ve been told.

I pause unsure of what to say. In the fog of watching the forests disappear, they’d said: “These pods will save Ecology, because they limit individual emissions.” Without green landscapes to inspire hope, we listened to them. “Ecopods”—just suffocatingly small apartments.This is the type of wordplay they use to trick our minds. 

I glance toward the window. Beyond it, the shimmering gate glints in the daylight, the world beyond is hazy and unreachable. I see cracks in the narrative. We can still breathe outside air. All the plants died on the same day—too coincidental to be a coincidence. I have yet to find others who remember…. Or maybe nobody else will admit that the crisis feels manufactured.

I move my lips to form back into the smile I don’t feel. And begin to make up an explanation, “E—“

The loudspeaker blares, interrupting us: “Remember: Every step you take outdoors disrupts what ecosystems have begun to heal. Keep inside. Keep prudent. Protect the planet.” The government is like a bird constantly chirping in our ears, its unnerving melody prevents us from forming our own thoughts.

Cillian woke me in the dead of night: “I dreamt of a tsunami flooding our whole neighbourhood.” Then again early in the morning: “I saw our pod community burning down.” These announcements simmer in our subconsciousnesses, and play out in our dreams. When a message repeats, it starts to sound like the truth… 

I grab the green crayon, and draw a tree on his drawing. “They just forgot to put the plants and trees back,” I lie as an answer to Cillian. “And sometimes, when people forget, it’s up to others to remember for them.”

They say, “ignorance is bliss,” but the words hidden in my heartbeat whisper, “Indifference is piss—I need to believe I can do something about this.” Perhaps that was their trick all along—convincing us that this version of reality is the only possible one.

“Thud, thud, thud.” As my anger rises, so does the song of hope in my heart. It crescendos—I am going to find a way to free us. 

I look out the window at the oppressive gate, and back to Cillian's drawing. Then, with my newfound determination, I pick up the yellow crayon he used—that he still sees as hope—and place it firmly back in his hand. 

Chapter 4: Waking Dream

Silence descends on me. I take a deep breath, and exhale sharply trying to push the planet off my ribcage. Raising Cillian alone is like carrying the world on my back. On William’s custody weekends, I remember who I am outside of caregiving, and lately, the other dimension has been calling—I can’t hit “decline” forever.

Tonight, I’m finally going to answer. So I light candles and draw a bath.

The bathroom glows with warm candlelight, shadows dance on the tiles. I sink into the temperate bath and invoke all the elements: the water cradling my body, the flickering fire of the candle, the incense smoke spiraling through the air. I glide a dark green moss ball over my skin, grounding me to the earth. This ritual is my bridge.

My body relaxes, but my mind floats—to the place between thoughts, where the world bends and the veil thins.

“Come,” it whispers.

I allow myself to go.

“The time is now.” I hear. The male voice is calm but urgent. It jolts through me.

My old friend Silas’s face emerges unexpectedly in the air, in a cloud of radiant energy. 

I’m still in the tub, bubbles clinging to my skin, but there is a second reality that now shimmers over the physical world, intangible, but undeniable. His presence is like the wind—you can’t see it, but you know it’s there, and it changes everything.

“Remember that mushroom trip we had when we were teenagers?” his voice says. “I told you we were warriors, that there was a spiritual battle coming. You need to find me in the real world, and say, ‘The time is now.’ Those words are the key. I’m not awake right now, but they will wake me up.”

“I’ll find you.” I promise.

The vision fades. 

As I’m drying off, the warmth of the bath is replaced by a cold spike of fear. What am I supposed to do? I can’t just show up after all these years and tell Silas that his higher self crossed dimensions to give me a message? He used to believe in this stuff—psychic links, indigo children, cosmic fights—but people change… What will he think of me?

Just a dream, I tell myself. A waking dream. I try to dismiss it as a trick of my mind, but the loudspeaker blares: “Alert: Worldwide heat waves spark a water shortage crisis.” Is this the spiritual war beginning?

I press a palm to my forehead, searching for a fever that might explain this phenomenon. My skin is cool, but a cold sweat rains across it. 

Since my split with William, I’ve been trying to glue myself back together, but I think I’ve lost the glue… and maybe my sanity too.

A memory haunts me. I once saw a group of people claim enlightenment, only to be shut down by the prevailing scientific discourse: “We can map religious experiences in the brain. Anyone can feel like they are enlightened with the right stimulation. Transcendence is just misfiring neurons.” That group was silenced—by pills, and padded walls.

Are we so blinded by a grind that equates existence with suffering that we’ve forgotten the stories of prophets who walked in higher realms? 

I have a theory of my own. If something as small as excess dopamine can trigger these journeys, and if those who travel there share the same visions… Doesn’t that suggest those realms are real?

Maybe I have lost my mind.

But the message echoes—The time is now.

Chapter 5: The Mirror’s Truth

“I, Violet, welcome you to my TED Talk,” I announce to my reflection, playing both speaker and audience. “I traverse the spectrums of consciousness—from a powerful lion who knows she sits atop the food chain, to a timid rabbit cowering in fear.”

My reflection shifts with each word. 

One moment, I’m youthful and radiant—grey eyes glowing like moonstone, waves of hair flowing like ocean currents, my features are luminous under my imagined stage lights. The next, reality bends, particles rearrange, and I become a hag—ancient and hollow-eyed.

“My perception,” I continue, mesmerized by the dance of light across my face, “is coloured by how much light reaches me. The pigments of my feelings paint everything I see.”

My reflection’s lips speak to me: “Others shift too. In fact entire populations can slide between states of consciousness simultaneously, repainting the world to match.”

I step back from the mirror, heart hammering. Where did that come from? That was my voice, but the thought wasn’t mine. 

An ancestral knowing buried deep in my bones awakens inside of me—our collective consciousness is regressing, it wasn’t always this way.

My reflection’s words linger as I reach for my phone, desperate for a foothold. My screen is open to social media; the first post is a meme that says: “Margaret Mead believed caring for the wounded defines civilization.” We aren’t caring anymore, we’re hiding.

The synchronicistic timing of this post sends me floating again. I grip the edge of the sink. Stay earthbound—for Cillian.

I notice that the dish soap is nearly empty, and open up my notes app to write a reminder to get more, but my thumb slips across the glass screen, tapping open a forgotten, years old, note. The title glows back at me: “The Constellation Framework”

I scroll through pages and pages of the secret world I once architected. I see: A charter for a system that values ecological restoration as currency. A detailed plan for decentralized governance, where locals make decisions for themselves, not a faceless loudspeaker. It’s all here, written out. A viable new system for us.

I clutch the sink harder, feeling the sheer futility of my dream as a physical weight. I catch a glimpse of my sad eyes in my reflection in the metal. My only audience. I turn on the tap, and let the dream go down the drain along with the cold rushing water, then push myself out of the small room.

After sinking into my futon to relax, my phone screen lights up unprovoked with a link to an article entitled: “Quantum entanglement”. Maybe quantum theory holds the key to fix this?

I read on: “Quantum entanglement is when two particles become linked in such a way that whatever happens to one instantly affects the other, even if they’re far apart.” The words resonate with the hollow ache in my chest, where connection should be.

“Ding” I look at my phone, and see a text from William: “I will meet you at the gate tomorrow at 3pm with Cillian.”

Then the thought hits me, a truth that comes as recognition, not revelation: William and I are quantum entangled. Whenever I have a bad day, he is having one too. Whenever my heart fills with warmth for him, he texts me immediately after. My love for him isn’t just a feeling—it’s woven into the universe’s fabric.

I stare at the phone. This device—it’s my lifeline. My only connection to anything outside the gate. Maybe when technology evolves into the quantum realm, it will transform from destroyer to saviour?

“Ding.”

The email notification interrupts my thoughts. I never get emails anymore?

The sender is “University of Concordance”. My pulse quickens as I read:

“We are recruiting former university students for an experimental study. Compensation: $15,000. This experiment tests new virtual consciousness technology. Your psychological profile meets our criteria.

The experiment involves a human-computer interface that will allow interaction with the internet using thought alone. The mechanisms are shipped out upon agreement.

Confidentiality agreement required.

Warning: This experiment carries risks. Legal waivers mandatory.

Consider carefully. Respond immediately.”

The air leaves my lungs. Another synchronicity, the timing of this invitation is so precise it feels orchestrated. 

Why me? Why now?

My hands tremble. Is this technology’s next evolution—the bridge between problem and solution? 

Or is this how they trap us free thinkers, by dissolving the boundary between mind and machine until nothing remains but data? This could either enslave my mind, or give me the power to free humanity…

The cursor blinks in the reply field.

I catch my own gaze in the darkness of my now sleeping phone screen, and my reflection says, “All your reflections are choices. Even fear.”

Chapter 6: Opening a channel

I sink into my futon—my workspace, my couch, my bed. The yellowish-white walls creep in towards me. In this moment, I become aware of my imprisonment—the entirety of my existence is spent here. 

I am raising a child in solitary confinement.

Beside me, Cillian lies sprawled, his small chest rising and falling in the heavy heat. The air is too thick for play. He should be running with other kids, not wilting in a box. My chest tightens. What kind of life am I giving him?

A burst of energy hits me. I grab a pen, and a crumpled piece of paper from Cillian’s backpack, then find myself frantically scribbling: “Profits from a business could fund the revolution.” These words didn’t come from me; they came through me... I have never thought about starting a business—is the universe having me channel the solution? Then the pen in my hand writes… “A marketplace.”

An image appears in my mind’s eye: I see a woman in Indonesia, her hands working a loom passed down through generations. The tapestry she weaves is thick with her family’s stories, dyed in the colors of their hope. She places it on our marketplace, and somewhere in Toronto, someone buys it—not just paying for fabric, but for her to expand her palette from hope to reality.

“Mommy, what are you writing?” Cillian asks, eyes wide.

“Just a second, kiddo,” I pat him on the back, and the memory of the schoolyard flashes behind my eyes. The mother’s face, tight with contempt. The way she yanked her daughter away from Cillian’s offer of imaginary flowers.

For a moment my internal narrative floods in. My problems are karma. A cosmic punishment for not fitting in, not doing things the right way. The universe tallies my flaws, and sends back the bill as isolation.

But then, a switch flips in my head, so loud it feels like a physical click.

I see her face again in my mind, and I look past the anger. Beneath it, I see something else. I see the widening of her pupils. The rigid set of her jaw. It wasn’t contempt. It was fear.

They pipe fear into us through the loudspeakers. We are being programmed by the news alerts, and warnings. And then they have the nerve to tell us compliance will be our savior.

My pen moves on the page, writing : “The system is designed to make us small, to make us afraid of each other, because if we’re all locked in our own little boxes, we’ll never have the strength to look up and see the people running the machine.”

It’s not karma, it’s the system. A system working exactly as designed—and if a system was designed by people, it can be dismantled by them.

Then the pen in my hand starts its automatic writing again: “There needs to be a new way to communicate ideas, and form connections. Current social media use algorithms as a wall to hide you from each other.” Is this why it feels like we’re all screaming into a void?

Then another image forms in my mind’s eye: I see me? 

I am writing out my ideas for a post-capitalist system in a social media post. I feel confident about my ideas, but after being met with a silence that swallows me with the screen, I delete my post, and my confidence with it.

I gasp. Are they shadow banning me? Was my post hidden?

Then the vision in my mind’s eye shifts—I see the platform as two halves of a whole: one side a living marketplace, the other a new social media sanctuary for voices, one that connects us. A new Library of Alexandria they can’t burn down.

“What’re we doing today, Mommy?” Cillian’s voice pulls me from the spiral. He needs water, a cool breeze, a life bigger than these four walls. He needs a world where he can thrive, not just survive.

I look from his expectant face to the frantic lines on my page. My resolve hardens—I’ll do the experiment. I’ll use the money to hire someone to build the platform. 

This is how the revolution begins.

I ruffle his hair and quote Pinky and the Brain, the words a secret promise. “Same thing we do every day, Pinky—try to take over the world.”

He giggles, and the sound—pure light—fills the stifling room.

Chapter 7: Mechanism Current

I trace my fingers over the open invitation on my screen one more time. The letters feel warm under my touch—like they’re alive.

I take a breath and click “Accept.”

This is it.

This is my destiny calling.

With my mind plugged straight into the internet—I will find the solutions they swear don’t exist, perfect my revolution plan, design farms, whole communities, schools that don’t crush kids’ spirits…

My mind races ahead of me.

“Ring, ring.”

I see it’s “Concordance University”. I answer the call.

The video call connects. A man’s face snaps into focus—he looks at me with bright eyes that seem too big for his face.

“Hey there! I’m Joseph. Dr. Faroque’s on vacation, but I’m stoked to walk you through this.” He leans forward, his grin practically spilling out of the frame.

“Violet, this tech could literally change everything. You think about something—anything—and boom, your screen serves up exactly what you need. Not just the obvious stuff, but buried articles, obscure research—everything.”

I nod along, getting swept up in his energetic current.

“But here’s the crazy part,” Joseph says, eyes bulging. “Your device reads your neurotransmitter levels. It knows what interests you before you do. Conscious and subconscious desires, all of it. We’re turning regular people into geniuses—perfectly aligned with their purpose.”

Purpose. The word lands like a spark in dry grass.

Is he secretly spiritual too?

Is he also trying to save humanity?

His face glitches out, staying still on the frame in the shape of his pixel perfect smile.

My heart pounds.

I’m going to be on the frontline of a new frontier.

“So here’s how it works,” the screen unfreezes as he gestures wildly, “You take a metal tablet—we call it a mechanism.” He holds up a regular-looking white pill. I have to strain my eyes to make out the word stamped on it—“Probability”.

“It’s loaded with graphene nanotech. It flows through your bloodstream and connects to your neurotransmitters. Your brainwaves become like a radio transmitter, and your device picks up the signal.” I just stare.

This is literal alchemy.

Chemical magic.

“The internet becomes perfectly tailored to your personal will!” his high-pitched voice squeaks.

The timing of this is too synchronistic to ignore.

The universe chose this for me.

He uploads a virtual waiver to the screen.

I don’t even read it.

I just sign.

The time is now.

“Perfect! I’m sending your mechanisms in the mail right now,” Joseph says, too assured, as if he’s been practicing in a mirror. Then he just… logs off.

Was that abrupt? I don’t care.

I float, allowing the current to take me. I don’t doubt the universe, or question the current that brought me here.