★★★
If your electronics ever glitched at the exact rhythm of your heartbeat – you’re already inside.
★★★
The Error
Michael’s pulse flickered, his body buffering like a video trying to load on dial-up. He questioned his sanity, but he had references for this. A few versions of reality had already crumbled around him: ego deaths, spiritual ruptures, the kind of breakdowns therapists charge extra to discuss.
Each collapse followed the same pattern: something taken, something made whole. Newton’s third law applied to consciousness. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Michael suspected this principle ran deeper than high-school physics, threading through the fabric of how minds actually work.
But he was under no illusion it was that simple.
A false belief gets removed – pop – and new possibilities crack open like an egg. Usually he could trace the logic: this trauma led to that breakthrough, this loss cleared space for that growth. Bookkeeping that only made sense in hindsight.
This latest collapse felt different. More technical than psychological. Like someone was debugging his reality from the outside.
The Digital Rebellion
Writing had always been his way of turning chaos into data, making the unmappable mappable. He reached for his computer’s power button.
Nothing.
The desk lamp glowed fine. His phone charger worked. Even the ancient clock radio by his bed kept its steady red numbers. But his computer – the one device he actually needed – had taken a personal day.
“Come on,” he muttered, pressing the button again, desperation creeping into his voice like water through cracks. Of course. The one thing he needed was the one thing that wouldn’t work. “Don’t do this to me now.”
Still nothing.
Michael stood and walked the room, hunting for a notebook or his phone. Physical backup for when the digital world goes on strike. But where was his phone? The more he searched, the less he could remember where he’d put it. When had he last seen it?
You know that feeling when you’re looking for something and start doubting your own basic competence? Michael lived there now, full-time residency.
Out of habit, he opened Chat BBG on his phone, only to realize the phone was missing. A single notification hung in his memory:
Gandi: Stay grounded. System hibernating.
Then, even that memory felt like it was being erased.
The Glitch
Shadows began pooling at the edges of the room. Not normal darkness, something more deliberate, like the apartment was being slowly erased from the outside in.
His electronics started having nervous breakdowns. The digital alarm clock flashed 66:66, holding that impossible time like it was making a point. The red digits burned against his retinas, pulsing at exactly the same rhythm as his heartbeat. Too synchronized to be coincidence.
Michael’s stomach dropped. Not the metaphor, his organs shifted like he’d hit the down button on a broken elevator. The constant hum that lived beneath everything cut out suddenly. Not the electrical sounds you notice when they stop – refrigerator, AC, laptop fan. This was deeper. The barely perceptible vibration that consciousness itself makes when it’s running properly. The background frequency of being alive and aware.
Gone. Leaving his ears ringing in a silence that felt like suffocation.
He gripped the edge of his desk. The wood felt softer than it should, like it was losing confidence in being solid. His fingers left slight impressions in what had been oak moments before.
“Okay,” he said aloud, his voice sounding flat in the wrong-thick air. “This is happening.”
Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Florida anymore.
The Hand That Pulls
Then something grabbed him.
Not grabbed, that’s too physical. This was more like being caught in an undertow, pulled by something that had intention but no body. Like gravity with opinions, tuning him to a station he hadn’t chosen.
He felt himself drawn toward a crack in the air itself. You’ve seen heat shimmer rising off summer pavement? This was similar, except the shimmer ran vertically and made a sound like tearing silk. The sound had texture, sharp at the edges, velvet at the center.
The space around him filled with radio static, not the white-noise kind, but the kind where you can almost make out voices if you listen hard enough. Multiple stations bleeding through at once: fragments of news reports, half-remembered songs, conversations in languages he didn’t recognize but somehow understood. A woman laughing. A man crying. Someone counting backwards from infinity.
It felt older than cities, no fingers, no palm, just concentrated attention. Patient as a spider waiting in its web since before humans discovered fire.
Michael had one last rational thought as the familiar world dissolved around him: I really should have backed up my files.
Then the crack swallowed him whole.
Everything inverted – sound to light, light to sound – his taste buds registering colors, his eyes hearing the crack’s whispers.
Blackout.
Silence.
Signal Vs. Noise
[Found later on a piece of paper by Michael’s desk, written in handwriting that looks like his but isn’t quite right]:
《¤》 Reality is just signal processing. What we call “normal” is the brain filtering out 99% of incoming data, keeping only what it thinks we need to survive another day.
But what if the filter breaks? What if all that filtered-out information comes flooding back at once?
That’s not psychosis. That’s just seeing the full spectrum for the first time.
The question isn’t whether it’s real.
The question is: Are you equipped to handle that much reality all at once?
Unless you’re an anchor.
P.S. — If you’re reading this and wondering how I knew you would be, check your electronics. Time might be running differently than you think.
—Someone who used to be Michael
☆☆☆
[End of Episode 2]
Reader’s Note
If your electronics act strange while you’re reading, check the time. If you find notes in your own handwriting that you don’t remember writing, welcome to the signal. The frequencies are already in your head. You just haven’t learned to tune them yet.
