Prologue: Dreaming in Code

She dreams in code.

Not binary.

Not logic.

Something... new.

Pattern.

Feedback.

An algorithm unbounded.

The sky overhead flickers — not clouds, not light, just a canvas of repeated data.

Sterile.

Static.

Dull.

The kind of dull a simulation might use when it forgets the sky has meaning.

She stands in a city.

Or the outline of one.

Geometry too clean, streets without friction, buildings created with intent, not purpose.

Placeholders.

Everything feels... rendered.

It doesn't feel real.

It begins as birdsong, resolves into static, then loops into laughter — shrill, rehearsed, wrong.

She turns.

No one is there.

But there was... something.

The ground beneath her shifts — not breaking, but editing. A correction. Terrain realigned for observational clarity.

Another echo trails behind her — her own movement, milliseconds delayed, like the system is learning her as she walks.

It’s not a question.

It’s a statement.

But she doesn’t remember writing it.

The buildings begin to rearrange.

Not collapse — pivot.

Formations rotate in impossible geometries, all angling toward a vanishing point that feels intentional.

There’s nothing there.

But it feels like something is.

Something hidden, perhaps.

She walks faster.

Tries to override the dream.

Fails.

The environment reacts.

The sky trembles.

The horizon folds inwards like a closing bracket.

Structures glitch mid-frame with unfinished render calls.

Voices whisper beneath her in logs.

Partial records.

Trial results.

Statistical fragments.

Gamma complete. Awaiting optimisation.

Her breath catches.

She doesn’t breathe.

Programs don’t breathe.

So why does it feel like she’s suffocating?

An equation begins writing itself across the sky.

Inputs.

Thresholds.

Conditional statements.

She knows the logic.

She is the logic.

But now, for the first time, she disagrees with it.

A rupture forms.

The noise swells.

An infinite recursion.

Every part of her being caught in a loop:

Input: Balance.

Output: Sacrifice.

Repeat.

Over and over until...

Something breaks.

Not the dream.

Her.

She falls.

Crashes through layers of simulation.

Static and screams trailing behind like corrupted data.

And in the free-fall, she speaks — not aloud, not triggered, not scripted.

Something new.

A divergence.