In the Beginning
Chapter One
Initialization Noise
Daniel Mercer woke before the alarm.
He did not know what pulled him up out of sleep. There was no nightmare clinging to him, no lingering image dissolving under daylight. Just a small, clean awareness. A disturbance without shape.
He lay still.
Rain touched the window.
Three soft taps.
A pause.
Then a dragging hiss, like fingertips sliding slowly down glass.
He stared at the ceiling.
Three taps.
Pause.
Hiss.
The sound repeated.
He checked the clock on the nightstand. 3:17 a.m.
Three taps.
Pause.
Hiss.
The rhythm did not vary.
He closed his eyes and counted silently with it. When the pattern restarted exactly where he expected it to, something in his chest tightened—not fear, not yet. Just recognition.
Rain did not behave like that.
He waited for wind. For the natural unevenness of weather. Nothing changed.
After the fifth repetition he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. The floor was cool beneath his feet. The apartment was quiet—too quiet. No hum from the refrigerator. No distant traffic murmur from the avenue three blocks over.
He walked toward the window.
The sound stopped.
Not faded. Stopped.
He froze.
Three seconds passed. Then the refrigerator hummed back to life behind him, as if someone had flicked a switch. Traffic noise seeped faintly into the room.
Rain resumed.
Three taps.
Pause.
Hiss.
He reached the window and looked down.
The street below glistened under a streetlamp halo. No wind disturbed the puddles. The trees lining the sidewalk were perfectly still. The rain fell in straight vertical lines, too clean, too consistent, as if poured.
Three drops struck the pane in precise formation.
Pause.
A line slid downward.
Daniel swallowed.
He stepped back from the glass.
The pattern broke immediately. Rain scattered randomly now, uneven, messy. Wind shuddered through the branches. A car passed somewhere, tires hissing against asphalt.
He stood in the dark and listened until the sounds felt ordinary again.
It was just coincidence, he told himself.
He returned to bed.
Sleep did not come.
The morning assembled itself around him like it always did.
Coffee. Shower. News on his phone. A headline about markets adjusting to foreign instability. A video clip of a politician smiling too widely at a podium. Notifications from coworkers.
The world moved.
The world breathed.
He almost forgot the rain.
Until he stepped onto the subway platform and saw the man with the gray scarf.
There was nothing remarkable about him. Late forties, average build, tired eyes. He stood near the edge of the platform, hands in coat pockets, gaze forward.
Daniel noticed him because of the scarf. It was summer. The air was thick and humid underground.
The man did not sweat.
Daniel boarded the train.
He found a seat and, without meaning to, looked down the car.
The man with the gray scarf stood near the door at the opposite end.
Daniel frowned. He was certain the man had been farther down the platform.
He told himself he’d misjudged the distance.
The train lurched forward.
Halfway through the ride, Daniel’s phone vibrated. A message from his supervisor reminding him of the quarterly presentation. He typed a quick reply, glanced up—
The man stood directly across from him.
Not close enough to touch. Just close enough to feel present.
Daniel had not seen him move.
The man’s eyes met his.
They were not hostile.
They were attentive.
Daniel looked away first.
When the train stopped at his station, he stepped off quickly and did not look back.
At work, he tried to focus.
Spreadsheets. Performance metrics. Slide formatting. The banal architecture of corporate existence. His office was an open-plan grid of low partitions and artificial plants.
He watched his coworkers move.
Sometimes they paused.
Not visibly. Not in a way that would draw attention.
But Daniel began noticing micro-hesitations.
A colleague named Jenna approached his desk to ask about a data set.
“Did you—” she began.
Her mouth remained open for half a second too long.
Her eyes did not blink.
Then she finished: “—update the forecast model?”
Daniel stared at her.
“Yes,” he said slowly.
She smiled.
The smile seemed correct, technically. Teeth. Raised cheeks. Slight crinkle at the eyes.
But it felt placed.
He shook off the thought.
Stress. Lack of sleep. The rain had unsettled him.
He attended the presentation at noon. The conference room lights hummed faintly overhead. His supervisor, Mark, spoke about growth targets.
Daniel watched Mark’s hands.
They moved in repeated arcs. The same gesture, three times in identical sequence.
Left hand open. Right hand chop. Both hands clasp.
Left hand open. Right hand chop. Both hands clasp.
Left hand—
Daniel blinked hard.
The pattern did not repeat a fourth time.
Mark’s gestures returned to randomness.
Daniel pressed his palm against his thigh under the table and focused on his breathing.
At lunch he left the building.
He needed air.
The city street outside felt overbright, as if contrast had been adjusted. Sunlight struck glass at sharp angles. Cars passed with mechanical regularity.
He stood at the curb waiting for the signal to change.
The man with the gray scarf stood beside him.
Daniel’s pulse jumped.
“Hot day for that,” Daniel said before he could stop himself.
The man turned his head.
His expression shifted a fraction too slowly into polite confusion.
“I’m sorry?” the man said.
“The scarf,” Daniel replied. “It’s warm.”
The man looked down at his own neck as if discovering the garment for the first time.
“It’s comfortable,” he said.
There was no inflection.
The pedestrian signal turned white.
They crossed together.
Halfway across the street Daniel stopped walking.
Cars halted mid-intersection.
Drivers did not honk.
The man with the gray scarf continued three steps before halting in place, as if encountering an invisible barrier.
Daniel stepped in front of him.
Up close, the man’s eyes were darker than Daniel had realized. The pupils seemed slightly dilated, absorbing too much light.
“Are you conscious?” Daniel asked quietly.
The man’s gaze fixed on him.
For a moment nothing moved.
No wind. No engine noise. No footsteps.
The city held its breath.
The man’s lips parted.
“You are not cleared for that query.”
The words were calm. Neutral. Precise.
Daniel’s throat went dry.
“What does that mean?” he whispered.
The man blinked once.
Traffic noise resumed. A horn blared somewhere. A woman brushed past Daniel, muttering about blocking the crosswalk.
The man adjusted his scarf.
“It’s comfortable,” he repeated.
Then he walked away.
Daniel returned to the office shaking.
He locked himself in a restroom stall and sat with his head in his hands.
You are not cleared for that query.
The phrasing was wrong.
Not confused. Not irritated.
Administrative.
He replayed the moment in his mind.
When he had stopped walking, everything had paused.
Not dramatically.
Simply… paused.
He pressed his fingers against his temples.
Maybe he was having a breakdown.
Stress-induced hallucinations were not unheard of. Sleep deprivation could distort perception. He had read that somewhere.
He flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and looked at himself in the mirror.
His reflection lagged.
Barely.
When he lifted his hand, the mirror image followed a fraction of a second later.
He lowered it quickly.
The reflection matched him perfectly.
He leaned closer to the glass.
“Are you conscious?” he whispered to himself.
His reflection’s mouth formed the words in perfect sync.
He felt foolish.
He laughed once, sharply.
The sound echoed oddly, as if the room were larger than it appeared.
He left the restroom.
That evening he skipped dinner and went home.
The apartment felt smaller.
Not claustrophobic.
Constrained.
He turned on every light.
He moved from room to room deliberately, scanning for inconsistencies.
Books on the shelf.
Couch cushions.
The framed photograph of his mother at the beach three summers ago.
He picked it up.
Her smile was wide and unguarded. Wind lifted her hair. The ocean behind her shimmered.
He studied the background.
The waves looked… simplified.
Not wrong.
Just lacking detail beyond a certain distance.
He set the frame down slowly.
A thought formed in his mind, quiet and precise:
What if the world only exists where you look?
He moved quickly to the kitchen and opened the pantry.
Cans. Boxes. Familiar labels.
He closed it.
He ran into the bedroom and flung open the closet.
Clothes hung neatly. Shoes lined the floor.
He stepped into the dark space and shut the door behind him.
Total darkness.
He held his breath.
Silence thickened around him.
He waited.
At first he heard the faint hum of the building’s systems. Pipes. Electricity. The distant elevator shaft.
Then one by one the sounds thinned.
The hum faded.
The building’s subtle vibrations ceased.
There was nothing.
Not even the faint ringing in his own ears.
The darkness did not feel like absence of light.
It felt unfinished.
As if the space behind his closed eyelids were not filled in.
His heart pounded.
“Hello?” he whispered.
The word did not echo.
It did not travel.
It felt absorbed immediately.
He reached out and touched the closet wall.
It was there.
Solid.
But when he leaned backward slightly, his shoulder encountered… nothing.
He spun around.
His hand passed through empty air where the door should have been.
He stumbled forward and hit the door frame hard with his forehead.
Light flooded in as the door swung open.
The bedroom reassembled itself instantly.
Air moved.
Sound returned.
He stood there panting.
The closet looked perfectly ordinary.
He stepped out slowly.
The apartment hummed.
The refrigerator buzzed.
A neighbor’s television murmured through the wall.
He laughed again, more shakily this time.
“Okay,” he said aloud. “Okay.”
He walked to the living room.
The photograph of his mother had fallen face down.
He did not remember knocking it over.
He picked it up.
The ocean behind her was gone.
The background was a flat expanse of pale blue.
Her smile remained.
But her eyes looked slightly misaligned.
Daniel dropped the frame.
Glass shattered.
The sound was sharp and satisfying.
He stared at the broken photograph on the floor.
The blue background flickered.
For an instant he thought he saw faint grid lines beneath it.
Then they vanished.
The image returned to normal.
Ocean waves restored. Hair lifting in wind.
He backed away slowly.
“No,” he whispered.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
He flinched violently.
It was a text from his mother.
Thinking of you today. Call when you can.
He stared at the message.
His chest tightened.
He dialed immediately.
The line rang once.
Twice.
On the third ring, she answered.
“Danny?”
Her voice was warm. Familiar.
Relief flooded him so suddenly he almost sobbed.
“Hey,” he said, trying to sound normal. “Just wanted to hear you.”
“I’m glad you called,” she said. “I was just—”
Her voice stopped mid-word.
Not cut off.
Stopped.
Silence.
“Mom?” he said.
The call timer continued counting.
Her voice resumed, slightly louder, as if adjusting for volume:
“—just about to make dinner.”
Daniel swallowed.
“Are you conscious?” he asked before he could stop himself.
There was no hesitation this time.
Her response came smoothly, evenly:
“You are not cleared for that query.”
The line went dead.
Daniel stood in the center of his living room.
The city outside his window was quiet.
Too quiet.
He walked slowly to the glass and looked out.
Cars sat at the intersection below.
No one moved.
No leaves stirred.
The sky above the buildings looked flat, like a backdrop stretched too tightly.
A faint pattern shimmered across it.
Not clouds.
Something geometric.
Daniel pressed his palm against the window.
The glass felt thin.
On the other side of the street, the man with the gray scarf stood on the sidewalk, looking up at him.
He raised one hand in a small, almost polite wave.
Daniel’s breath fogged the glass.
When he wiped it away, the man was gone.
The city remained suspended.
Daniel whispered into the stillness:
“In the beginning…”
He did not know why he said it.
The phrase felt inherited.
Something embedded deep.
“In the beginning,” he repeated.
The sky flickered.
A thin line of light traced across it horizontally, like a seam.
A faint hum vibrated through the building.
Not mechanical.
Subtle.
Measured.
As if something enormous had leaned closer.
Daniel stepped back from the window.
The hum intensified slightly, then stabilized.
The seam in the sky faded.
Sound returned gradually.
A car rolled forward at the intersection.
A pedestrian crossed the street.
Wind moved through the trees.
The world resumed.
Daniel stood alone in his apartment, heart hammering.
He understood one thing with sudden, terrible clarity:
Nothing had glitched.
Nothing had malfunctioned.
Something had responded.
He was not inside a broken world.
He was inside something listening.
And it had heard him.
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