The hum deepens.
It does not grow louder. It grows closer—as if distance itself is being edited out. The room tightens around the sound, learning what it means to contain something that wants to be read.
The Reader sits up slowly, every movement deliberate, like she's afraid of triggering a paragraph break. She scans the space with a practiced eye—not fear, not panic, but assessment. A survivor's literacy.
"This place is provisional," she says. "It's letting us exist because it hasn't figured out how to format us yet."
You swing your legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cool. Solid. Blessedly indifferent. No footnotes bloom beneath your weight. No italics whisper corrections into your bones.
"What is this place?" you ask.
She hesitates.
"A buffer," she says finally. "A human one."
That makes you look up.
