★★★
If your feet have ever felt lighter than gravity allows, you’re already inside.
★★★
The Cathedral Gravity Forgot
Michael’s feet didn’t press into the ground the way he expected. He scanned his surroundings like someone patting pockets after a pickpocket – methodical, hunting what might be missing.
Everything felt different. Lighter. The ineffable density that had weighed him down his entire life – that constant pressure he’d never had words for – had simply evaporated. Gone like morning fog burning off.
Gravity felt different. Walking was effortless, like moving through warm water instead of air. His lungs filled easier. His thoughts moved faster. Even his diabetic body, usually sluggish and unreliable, hummed with unfamiliar energy.
This is what normal people must feel like, he thought. This is what it’s like when reality isn’t actively working against you.
He looked around and saw… people. Except not exactly people. Hominids of different types, some tall and angular like living geometry, others compact and crystalline, their skin catching light in impossible ways. The diversity reminded him of a sci-fi cantina, except no one was in costume. This was just Tuesday for them. Their Tuesday.
They all moved beneath a massive dome that curved overhead like a cathedral made of light and mathematics. Equations shimmered faintly in the air, almost legible.
The Hand Behind the Curtain
After processing this flood of input. Okay, new reality, different physics, alien roommates, got it – Michael finally noticed the strong hand still resting on his back. The same grip that had ripped a hole in spacetime to place him here.
The touch felt like solidified intention. Ancient purpose made tactile. Warm but not quite human-warm.
He turned to face his guide and nearly choked.
The face bore a striking resemblance to his own, but aged by wisdom and experience that showed most clearly in the eyes. Like looking at himself after living several lifetimes he hadn’t earned yet. The crooked smile was identical.
The serious expression broke into a grin. “Yo, Mikey, what’s good? It’s me, Brayne Snax.”
Michael’s brain performed an emergency reboot. His chest jolted like he’d grabbed a live wire. His knees nearly buckled.
Brayne Snax. The pseudonym he’d been using for artistic projects for years. The name that lived on album covers and story credits, scrawled in the margins of notebooks and the corners of his imagination. The signature on creative work he’d never quite felt confident claiming as his own.
Standing here. Talking to him. Looking like his older, wiser brother, the brother he’d never had but always imagined.
The Skeptic’s Last Stand
The ever-present skeptic in Michael’s head grabbed the microphone and started shouting objections. Even with inexplicable evidence standing right in front of him, his rational mind refused to surrender without a fight.
“So this is a psychotic break,” he said, voice steadier than he felt, “immersing me in a project I’ve been working on for years?”
Good, he thought. Maintain critical thinking. Don’t let the hallucination win. That’s what sane people do.
Brayne replied without missing a beat, like he’d been expecting the question for decades. “Not exactly, although I understand that perspective. More accurately, your projects have been translations of seeds I’ve snuck into your subconscious reality-processing mechanisms.”
Michael felt something crack behind his sternum, not bone, but belief. “You mean to tell me all my creative efforts haven’t actually been mine? They’re a time-travel project? That’s the logic you’re trying to convince me with?”
Because if that’s true, then what part of you was ever really you?
Brayne’s tone softened, patient as a teacher explaining basic math to a frustrated student. “Your translations have been completely yours, man. The way you tend the seeds and harvest their fruits, that’s free will in action. Your revelations and understandings have mystified the Syndicate for centuries.”
Something loosened in Michael’s chest, relief mixed with vertigo, like stepping off a ledge and discovering you could fly. His work mattered. His strange, obsessive creative spirals had been building toward something real. But if it mattered to beings he’d never known existed…
“Mystified the Syndicate?” Michael’s voice cracked. “What Syndicate?”
But he was too psychologically disoriented to process whatever answer might come. Questions piled up faster than he could ask them, a traffic jam of impossibilities in his throat. The comfortable, effortless feeling of this new reality was consuming almost all his mental bandwidth, like trying to hold a conversation while floating in a sensory deprivation tank.
The Syndicate Headquarters
Brayne read his confusion and motioned for him to follow. They walked through streets that looked almost normal—if you ignored the fact that some residents had crystalline skin that rang like wind chimes when they moved, and others seemed to be made of organized light that left afterimages on your retinas.
Finally, they arrived at what Brayne called “Syndicate Headquarters.” The building was bigger, older, more intentional than the others. Ancient but not crumbling. Powerful in the way certain old trees are powerful, rooted deep, reaching high.
Sigils and alchemical symbols were etched into each stone block, and each symbol seemed to emit its own subtle psychic field. Michael felt them like tiny tuning forks resonating in his bones as he approached.
He walked toward the entrance with awe and terror braided together in his chest, the kind of apprehension you feel walking into a job interview that might change your entire life, if job interviews could also rewrite the laws of physics.
The symbols pulsed gently, like a heartbeat made of meaning. Standing near them felt like being close to a massive generator humming just below the range of hearing, you couldn’t hear it, but you could feel the power thrumming in your bones, behind your teeth, in the hollow spaces of your skull.
Brayne didn’t speak aloud. Instead, his voice appeared directly in Michael’s mind, clear as his own thoughts but distinctly not his own:
Enter.
The door was heavy wood carved with spirals that shifted whenever he looked away, not obviously, but like peripheral vision playing tricks, except the tricks were real.
This is it, he thought. The moment I either get answers or lose my mind completely.
He reached for the handle, brass worn smooth by centuries of other hands seeking the same impossible answers.
Reality Check
[Note found later, tucked between pages of Michael’s notebook]:
If you’re reading this and wondering whether any of it’s real: wrong question.
Better question: What does “real” even mean when your pseudonym starts having conversations with you?
Reality isn’t about what’s true. It’s about what’s useful.
And maybe – just maybe – the universe has been trying to get your attention for a long time, and this is just the first method that finally worked.
Electronic Coherence isn’t just about devices behaving. It’s about whether your inner signals align or scatter.
—Someone who used to be skeptical
☆☆☆
[End of Episode 3]
Reader’s Note
Still following along? Good. Because if Michael’s pseudonym can have its own life, what does that say about the characters you’ve been creating? The names you invent might be inventing you back. Check behind you, just in case.
